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tibmrjp  of  tire  Cheolo^icd  ^tmimvy 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


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PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estpte  of  the 
Hev.  John  B,  Wiedinger 


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MAR    3    VHS 


UNION    WITH    GOD 


A   SERIES   OF  ADDRESSES 


J.    RENDEL'HARRIS 


NEW    YORK 

A.     1).    F.    RANDOLPH    &    CO. 

182    FIFTH    AVENUE 

1895 


PREFACE 

^  I  ^HE  short  papers  contained  in  this  volume 
will  be  recognised  by  many  into  whose 
hands  they  will  come  as  memorials  of  occasions 
when  we  have  with  our  friends  been  partakers 
of  the  same  spiritual  meat.  Their  analogue 
in  the  Gospel  is  the  fragments  of  blessed 
bread  left  over  from  satisfied  lips,  only  with 
this  contrast,  that,  instead  of  twelve  baskets 
marvellously  full,  we  have  one  tiny  basket 
with  twelve  little  pieces  of  bread  in  it.  I 
hope,  however,  that  it  will  be  found  that  these 
fragments,  like  the  consecrated  wafers  in  the 
Eastern  ritual,  are  marked  with  the  sign  of 
the  Cross  and  with  the  legend  that  ''  Jesus 
Christ  conquers."  We  speak  of  suffering  made 
holy,  of  sorrow    made   sweet,  and   of  victory 


vi  PREFA  CE 

made  real ;  but  have  no  other  Gospel  for  our 
own  needs  or  for  the  needs  of  the  world  than 
the  grace  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ.  But  this 
Gospel,  however  enigmatic  it  may  seem  to 
the  carnal  mind,  is  sufficient  to  make  saints 
and  to  enable  them  to  take  their  kingdom. 

J.   RENDEL   HARRIS. 


CONTENTS 


I 

PAGE 

THE  GLORY  OF  THE   BRIDEGROOM  ....  3 


II 

THE   BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE   BRIDE        .  .  .  .         I9 

III 
UNION   WITH   A   PRAYING  SAVIOUR  .  .  .  .        4I 

IV 
UNION   WITH   THE  WILL  OF  GOD 67 

V 
CREED  AND   CHARACTER 8;^ 

VI 

THE  .SABBATISM   OF  THE   PEOPLE   OF  GOD       ...        99 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 


VII 

PAGE 

THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM 1 13 


VIII 
"  HE  THAT  IS  JOINED  UNTO  THE  LORD  IS  ONE  SPIRIT  "      127 

IX 

GRACE  AND   HEREDITY 151 

X 
A  CORN  OF  WHEAT 171 

XI 

THE   HOLY  PATIENCE 1 83 

XII 
THE  DEATH-SONG I99 


THE  GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM 


"  This  beginning  of  7niracles  did  Jesus  in  Cana  of  Galilee,  and  mani- 
fested His  glory  ;  and  His  disciples  believed  on  Him." — ^JOHN  ii.  II. 


THE   GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM 

IT  would  scarcely  be  divined  by  a  person  who 
should  have  presented  to  him  the  mass  of 
evangelic  traditions  which  constitute  the  sources 
of  the  Gospels  as  we  know  them,  that  the 
miracle  which  St.  John  relates  in  his  second 
chapter  occupied  the  front  rank  in  time  or  in 
intensity,  so  that  it  should  be  called  the  initial 
sign  or  beginning  of  miracles.  It  is  likely  that 
if  we  were  left  to  imagine  to  which  of  Christ's 
works  of  power  such  pre-eminence  belonged,  we 
might  select  an  occasion  like  that  of  the  raising 
of  Lazarus,  and  say  of  it,  "  This  must  be  the 
beginning,  the  prince  of  miracles,  which  Jesus 
did  in  Bethany  of  Judea,  and  manifested  forth 
His  glory,  and  His  disciples  believed  on  Him." 
But  there  is  no  word  in  connection  with  the 
marriage  at  Cana  that,  on  the  surface,  presents 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


such  dogmatic  truth  and  affords  such  inspira- 
tion of  faith  as  the  great  sentence,  "  I  am  the 
Resurrection  and  the  Life."  Compared  with 
this  august  saying,  believing  which  an  emanci- 
pated spirit  may  step  out  with  confidence  into 
an  unseen  world,  the  conversation  at  Cana 
seems  at  first  sight  to  rise  scarcely  above  the 
level  of  triviality.  How  does  it  come  to  pass 
that  this  occasion,  as  truly  as  the  scene  at 
Bethany,  was  one  when  men  should  see  glory 
manifested,  and  believe  ? 

The  answer  to  such  inquiries  can  only  be  in 
the  conclusion  that  the  banquet,  and  the  miracle, 
and  the  sayings  of  our  Lord  and  of  those  who 
were  gathered  with  Him,  were  instinct  with 
mystical  significance.  We  need  not  be  surprised 
that  such  was  apprehended  to  be  the  case  by 
St.  John,  to  whom  the  whole  world  and  all  that 
went  on  in  it  was  replete  with  meanings  not 
discernible  on  the  surface,  so  that  he  saw  every- 
where the  allegory  of  a  Divine  teaching,  and 
the  evidence  of  a  Divine  life,  and  read  all  the 
ordinary  writing  of  God's  finger  in  the  laws  of 
life  and  its  daily  motions  as  a  kind  of  sacred 
cipher,  the  key  to  which  had  been  confided  to 


THE  GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM  5 

him  by  the  Spirit  of  truth.  The  man  had  not 
been  long  with  Christ  before  he  left  off  eating 
the  common  bread  of  life,  and  betook  himself 
to  that  hidden  manna  of  which  the  outer 
nourishment  is  only  the  symbol.  He  became  a 
child  again,  but  in  a  larger  house.  By-and-by, 
after  having  played  with  the  flowered  hem  of 
God's  vesture  in  this  world,  he  pricked  the  per- 
fections of  Jesus  into  paper  with  a  pin,  and  we 
have  the  Fourth  Gospel — the  Gospel  which  is 
not  Synoptic  but  DIoptic,  which  tells  so  many 
things  which  he  saw  alone,  below  the  surface, 
in  distinction  from  the  things  which  the  other 
Evangelists  saw  together,  and  upon  the  surface. 
The  Fourth  Gospel  is  the  mystics'  own  Gospel. 
So  we  must  not  be  surprised  that  St.  John 
attaches  especial  importance  to  the  ordinary 
event  and  the  not  very  striking  conversation 
that  accompanied  it. 

We  observe,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  occa- 
sion was  one  on  which  the  Church  added  audibly 
the  second  term  to  the  Trisagion,  and  began 
to  say,  what  becomes  from  that  time  an  ever- 
increasing  volume  of  sound,  spreading  from  one 
believing  soul  to  another,  the  words,  "  Glory  be 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


to  the  Son."  The  whole  Hfe  of  Christ  is  a 
kind  of  evolution  of  the  Trisagion  :  I  mean 
that  His  days  on  earth  furnish  an  illustration  of 
the  "  Glory  to  the  Father,"  of  the  "  Glory  to 
the  Son,"  and  of  the  "  Glory  to  the  Holy 
Ghost."  The  angels  at  His  birth  proclaim  the 
"  Glory  to  the  Father"  ;  the  marriage  at  Cana 
marks  the  beginning  of  the  "  Glory  to  the 
Son "  ;  and  the  day  of  Pentecost,  with  the 
teaching  about  it,  and  the  promises  that 
ensured  it,  mark  the  point  when  the  "Glory  to 
the  Holy  Spirit  "  was  sounded  by  human  lips 
and  in  human  hearts.  So  that,  if  we  follow  the 
analogy  suggested  by  the  birthday  of  our  Lord 
and  by  the  day  of  Pentecost,  we  should  interpret 
St.  John  as  saying  that  the  marriage  day  at 
Cana  was  a  great  and  notable  day  of  the  Lord. 
But  we  must  admit  that  we  have  not  been  in 
the  habit  of  regarding  it  as  such.  Perhaps  that 
is  on  account  of  our  habit  of  estimating  the 
situations  in  the  Gospel  by  reference  to  the 
relative  grandeur  of  the  miracles  which  took 
place,  instead  of  looking  at  the  life  of  Christ 
from  the  standpoint  of  St.  John,  who  sums  up 
his  observations  of  Christ's  life  in  general,  and 


THE  GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM  7 

of  all  the  incidents  of  it,  not  in  the  words,  "  We 
beheld  His  miracles,"  but  in  the  infinitely 
deeper  terms,  "We  beheld  His  glory."  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  all  Christ's  miracles  are  of  the 
same  compass,  and  the  occasion  which  we  are 
studying  does  not  derive  its  importance  very 
much  from  the  quality  or  quantity  of  the  wine 
which  was  made  by  our  Lord.  Its  significance 
lies  in  the  revelation  of  His  person  rather  than 
in  the  record  of  His  work.  He  manifested 
His  glory. 

So  we  begin  to  see  that  the  marriage  at  Cana 
was  an  important  day  ;  we  begin  to  felicitate  the 
bridegroom  and  the  bride,  anonymous  but 
greatly  graced,  and  to  wish  that  we  had  been 
invited  to  the  celebration.  But  if  we  have  this 
feeling,  we  may  be  sure  that,  if  there  is  a 
mystical  interpretation  of  the  scene,  we  are 
invited.  When  it  comes  to  such  a  large  matter 
as  the  teaching  of  Christ  to  the  Church  and  His 
ministry  to  the  world  and  to  His  own  who  are 
in  the  world,  we  are  not  dealing  with  any  tran- 
sitory festival,  but  with  the  kingdom  of  God 
itself ;  and  we  are,  therefore,  entitled  to  say  of 
ourselves   with   reference   to   the  deeper  truths 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


which  underlie  the  story,  what  St.  John  says  of 
the  immediate  circle,  "  Both  Jesus  was  called 
and  His  disciples  to  the  marriage."  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  "they  were  called"  means  "we  are 
called."  The  truths  which  they  came  together 
to  learn,  which  made  Cana  of  Galilee  a 
Divinity  School  of  the  inward  life,  are  truths 
which  we  learn  with  them.  Their  communica- 
tions of  grace  are  ours  also  ;  and  the  mystical 
body  of  Christ  is  so  truly  one,  not  only  at  any 
given  time,  but  at  all  time,  that  one  who  is 
a  disciple  indeed  is,  if  one  may  say  so,  all 
disciples  in  one.  He  has  left  nets  with  the 
Zebedees,  and  custom-houses  with  St.  Matthew  ; 
his  tears  have  flowed  into  the  channel  of  the 
Magdalene's,  and  so  have  reached  the  sacred 
feet  of  our  Lord  ;  and  his  head  is  with  St. 
John's  on  the  bosom  of  everlasting  Love  ;  he  is 
in  all  crosses  and  pains  of  saints  that  suffer,  and 
partakes  of  all  glories,  and  wears  all  crowns  ; 
for  the  life  of  Christ  makes  him  one  with  all 
manifestations  of  Christ's  life,  both  suffering 
and  triumphant,  that  ever  have  been  or  ever 
will  be.  There  is  something  communicated 
to  the  true   believer  which  makes  him  under- 


THE  GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM 


Stand  the  words,  "  Yesterday,  to-day,  and  for 
ever."  Those  early  Fathers  were  not  so 
unreasonable  who  spoke  of  the  Church  as 
existing  before  the  sun  and  moon.  The  body 
of  Christ  is  something  more  than  a  fortuitous 
concourse  of  redeemed  atoms.  He  that  hath 
the  life  hath  the  Son  ;  there  is  nothing  for- 
tuitous, or  atomic,  or  transitory  about  that. 

What  then  is  the  calling  wherewith  the 
disciples  are  called  to  the  feast,  the  universal 
calling  of  which  we  have  been  speculating  ? 
It  must  be  an  invitation  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
life  of  God  in  the  Son  :  and  such  a  knowledge 
is,  first,  produced  by  a  word  addressed  to  faith, 
"  There  standeth  One  amongst  you  whom  ye 
know  not "  ;  secondly,  expressed  by  a  word 
from  an  enlightened  experience,  "  There  stand- 
eth One  amongst  us  whom  we  know."  "  And 
this  is  life  eternal,  to  know  Thee  and  the 
Christ  whom   Thou  hast  sent." 

Our  Lord  Christ-  began  His  service  in  the 
little  world  of  the  Galilean  and  Judean  ministra- 
tions, by  being  on  that  small  stage  what  God  is 
in  the  universe — an  anonymous,  or  unknown, 
or  hardly  known   being.      He   came   to    Cana, 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


perhaps  as  a  stranger,  possibly  as  a  poor 
relation,  for  it  was  an  occasion  when  poor 
relations  are  in  order  ;  it  does  not  appear  that 
He  was  asked  to  repeat  even  a  holy  word  over 
the  feast,  for  another  was  appointed  master  of 
the  feast.  The  bridegroom  and  the  bride  wore 
their  festal  crowns  ;  as  for  Him,  while  He  was 
in  this  world.  He  discarded  His  aureole,  or 
only  wore  it  on  rare  days  and  in  retreat,  as  at 
the  Transfiguration.  You  might  have  come  to 
the  feast,  and  marked  all  the  notables,  from 
near  and  far  ;  He  would  not  be  of  them  :  this 
one  is  the  bridegroom  of  the  day,  and  this 
the  bride  ;  this  the  bride's  father  or  mother, 
and  this  the  ruler  of  the  feast  :  and  this  an 
anonymous  Stranger,  one  of  the  Nazareth 
party  ;  we  have  not  seen  Him  in  these  parts 
before. 

The  action  of  the  drama  consists  in  making 
this  anonymous  Person  central ;  in  changing 
the  head  of  the  table  ;  or,  as  St.  John  puts  it, 
in  "manifesting  the  glory  of  the  Son." 

A  little  space  of  time,  a  few  brief  and  oracular 
speeches,  with  action  to  match,  and  then  there 
is  a   new  Feast-master    at   the   board.      "  For 


THE   GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM         n 

who,"  says  Philo,  "  can  pour  over  the  blessed 
and  happy  soul  the  libations  of  true  joy,  except 
it  be  the  Cup-bearer,  the  Master  of  the  Feast, 
the  Word  ?  "  And  now  it  is  the  old  feast- 
master  who  has  become  anonymous  ;  and  who 
would,  indeed,  be  altogether  forgotten  if  it  had 
not  been  that  the  Stranger  had  taken  over  his 
office  and  borrowed  his  title. 

One  that  entered  the  house  and  saw  the 
rejoicing  might  say  to  his  neighbour,  "  Behold 
the  bridegroom  !  "  Attention  is  naturally  drawn 
that  way  ;  felicitation  finds  its  obvious  centre 
in  the  joy  that  was  before  them,  in  the  persons 
of  those  for  whose  sake  they  had  come  together. 
But  these  who  came  to  the  feast  like  substance 
depart  like  shadows,  when  there  has  begun  to 
stir  in  the  heart  of  the  disciples  the  whisper  of 
a  new  Bridegroom  that  was  amongst  them,  or 
of  a  new  Bride.  Their  places  became  vacant, 
their  crowns  were  fading,  and  their  cups  were 
empty.  They  owed  it  to  Christ  that  they  ever 
passed  into  history ;  and  when  they  do  pass, 
they  are  become  anonymous,  while  their  stray 
Guest  has  acquired  a  name  that  is  above  every 
name.      Behold  the  Bridegroom  ! 


UNION   WITH  GOD 


This,  then,  is  the  action  of  that  day's  drama, 
and  this  is  also  the  action  of  the  drama  of  the 
spiritual  life  generally,  to  make  the  Anonymous 
appear  amongst  us,  and  to  make  us  become 
anonymous  except  in  Him  and  for  Him.  One 
of  the  surprises  that  God  treats  us  to  in  the 
course  of  our  life,  which  will  no  doubt  be  also 
the  overwhelming  surprise  of  our  first  review 
of  this  life  from  the  vantage-ground  of  a  larger 
and  better,  consists  in  the  disclosure  of  the 
way  in  which  our  anonymous  Lover  has  been 
besetting  us  behind  and  before,  and  laying  His 
hand  upon  us.  How  many  constraints  that 
make  for  salvation  have  never  been  registered 
in  the  consciousness  or  printed  off  on  the 
memory !  how  many  times  there  are  when 
qualification  for  duty  is  given  concerning  which 
we  shall  by-and-by  hear  the  voice  saying, 
"  I  girded  thee,  though  thou  didst  not  know 
Me"! 

"There  is  nothing,"  says  M,  Sabatier,  in  his 
recent  Life  of  St.  Francis,  "  that  corresponds 
to  piety  like  love  "  ;  and  the  service  of  love, 
especially  the  earlier  service,  is  often  anony- 
mous. 


THE   GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM         13 

Readers  of  Cowper's  Memoirs  will  remember 
the   way  in  which  Theodora,  his  cousin,   pur- 
sued him  through  life  with  gift  and  remembrance 
and  token  that  came  he  knew  not  from  whence. 
At  one  time  it  was  a  snuff-box  of  tortoiseshell 
with    a  familiar  landscape  on  the  lid,  and  the 
portrait  of  his  three  hares  ;  at  another  it  was  a 
seasonable  gift  of   money  ;    and  tradition  tells 
that   upon  one  occasion,  when  these  nameless 
tokens    reached    him,     he    remarked,     "  Dear 
Anonymous  is   come   again  ;  God  bless  JmnT 
It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  a  poet  could 
have  been  so  blind  as  not  to  know  that  such 
nameless    and    appropriate    gifts    never    come 
except  from  God,  and  from  good  women.      But 
even  when  we  lay  the  charge  of  want  of  insight 
at    the   poet's   door,   we   are    checked   by   One 
who  says,    "  Have   I   been   so   long  time   with 
you,  and  hast  thou  not  known  Me  ?     Have   I 
never  looked  in  at  thy  window,  or  left  gift  at 
thy  door  ?  "     Yet  oftentimes  the  expression  of 
the  conscious  heart   has   never  been  raised  so 
high    as    even  to  the  "Dear  Anonymous"  of 
the   poet.      It  is  a  part  of   God's    loving    way 
with    us    that    His    criticism  of  our    blindness 


14  UNION  WITH  GOD 

towards  Him  is  a  gradual  revelation  ;  He  can 
always  make  us  ashamed  when  He  wants  to. 

We  pass  to  another  consideration  :  the  reve- 
lation of  the  glory  of  the  Son  is  not  limited  to 
the  knowledge  of  the  fact  of  His  being,  and  of 
His  presence  in  the  midst  ;  it  is  a  knowledge 
of  the  way  in  which  He  works,  and  an  imitation 
of  the  same.  At  Cana  of  Galilee  He  was 
pleased  to  add  to  the  world's  joy  ;  He  took 
compassion  upon  people  whose  cups  were 
empty  or  half  empty,  and  the  more  compassion, 
perhaps,  because  they  were  acting  as  if  the 
cups  were  not  empty.  He  made  up  that  which 
lacked,  and  looked  into  the  faces  of  the  guests 
and  said,  "  Lacked  ye  anything  ?  "  and  every 
one  could  have  answered,  "  Nothing,  Lord, 
nothing  !  " 

Hard  by,  on  a  neighbouring  hillside,  is  a 
second  town,  otherwise,  but  for  His  presence, 
little  known,  where  He  occupied  Himself  in 
subtracting  from  the  world's  pain  ;  from  Nain 
to  Cana  is  a  very  short  journey  geographically  : 
how  far  is  it  in  every-day  life  ?  When  there 
is  a  wedding  in  one  street,  there  is  always 
a  funeral    in  the    next.      Christ    attends    both, 


THE   GLORY  OF  THE  BRIDEGROOM         15 

because  to  add  to  the  world's  joy  and  to  sub- 
tract from  its  pain  are  the  alternating  currents 
of  the  Eternal  Love  ;  and  it  is  in  these  ministries, 
which  belong  to  one  sacred  Person,  who  is 
equally  at  home  in  either,  because  eternally 
occupied  in  both,  that  we  see  the  glory  of  the 
Son,  who  would  not  tell  us  by  precept  to 
rejoice  with  them  that  do  rejoice  and  to  weep 
with  them  that  weep,  unless  He  had  furnished 
the  perfect  example  that  corresponds  to  the 
perfect  precept.  Nevertheless,  we  do  not 
chiefly,  and  certainly  not  only,  call  Him  the 
Man  of  Sorrows,  for  His  highest  title  is  the 
Master  of  the  Feast,  the  Bridegroom. 


II 

THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND   THE  BRIDE 


"  And  I  saw  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  :  for  the  first  heaveji  and 
the  first  earth  ivere  passed  away ;  and  there  was  no  more  sea.  And  I 
John  saw  the  holy  city,  nezv  Jerusalem,  coming  down  from  God  out  of 
heaven,  prepared  as  a  bride  adorned  for  her  husband.  And  I  heard  a 
great  voice  out  of  heaven  saying.  Behold,  the  tabernacle  of  God  is  with 
men,  and  He  will  dwell  with  them,  and  they  shall  be  His  people,  and 
God  Himself  shall  be  with  them,  and  be  their  God.  And  God  shall 
wipe  away  all  tears  fro?n  their  eyes  ;  and  there  shall  he  no  7)iore  death, 
neither  sorrotu,  nor  crying,  neither  shall  there  be  any  more  pain :  for 
the  former  things  are  passed  away." — Rev.  xxi.  1-4. 


II 

THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND   THE  BRIDE 

I  SUPPOSE,  beloved,  there  is  not  anybody 
who  has  a  message  that  is  worth  Hstening 
to  in  the  world  whose  message  is  not  concerned 
in  some  way  or  other  with  the  passing  away  of 
the  former  things.  Whether  we  are  dealing  with 
social  reforms  and  political  reforms,  or  whether 
we  are  dealing  with  those  deeper  reforms  which 
concern  the  inmost  of  human  life  and  thought, 
the  same  kind  of  problem  is  presented  to  us  : 
the  problem  of  getting  rid  of  the  dead  past. 
When  we  are  speaking  to  people  who  are  in 
sin,  and  trying  to  persuade  them  of  what  their 
duty  is  in  the  matter  of  repentance  and  faith, 
we  do  it  remembering  that  they  have  got  a 
long  history  behind  them  which  has  been  a 
displeasing  history  to  God  and  a  displeasing 
life  to  man,  and  that  such  a  record  is  under 

»9 


20  UNION  WITH  GOD 

condemnation,  and  that  God  does  not  mean  it 
to  stay  ;  and  that  the  sooner  they  apprehend 
that  fact  solidly,  and  set  themselves  according 
to  it,  and  become  properly  adjusted  with  regard 
to  the  promises  of  God  and  to  the  power  of 
God,  so  much  the  better  is  it  for  them. 

But  all  the  great  movements  of  the  soul  turn 
upon  the  same  conviction,  that  our  state  by 
nature  is  not  the  final  state.  Neither  is  the 
natural  joy  the  final  joy  ;  but  God  has  laid  up 
for  us  better  things — things  of  which  he  speaks 
as  passing  the  understanding  of  man  to  con- 
ceive how  good  they  are ;  and  one  of  the 
wonders  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  that  you 
can  have  a  large  proportion  of  those  things  in 
this  life.  Let  us  have  done  with  "postponed 
heavens."  We  want  to  understand  how  much 
of  God  is  to  be  known  in  this  life,  and  how 
much  of  the  joy  of  God  is  to  be  known  in  this 
world.  Such  an  understanding  and  such  an 
experience  is  the  only  reasonable  preparation 
for  the  life  and  blessedness  of  the  world  to 
come. 

1  would  be  a  Secularist  on  the  non-Christian 
plan,  if  it  were  not  that,  happily,  I  am  a  Secu- 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND   THE  BRIDE        2\ 

larist  already  on  the  Christian  plan.  I  under- 
stand that  a  great  many  of  those  people  who  say 
that  this  life  is  the  right  stage  on  which  to  see 
recovered  good  and  banished  evil  are  preaching 
the  true  Gospel,  and  that  it  is  the  Gospel  of 
the  New  Testament.  Now,  of  course,  we  apply 
this  first  of  all  to  the  individual,  and  we  begin 
with  the  individual  because  we  understand  that 
that  is  God's  way  of  dealing  with  the  world. 
There  is  no  gospel  which  does  not  proclaim  the 
regeneration  of  the  individual.  But  he  tells  us 
also  that  there  is  going  to  be  a  restored  social 
order.  It  is  called  "  New  Jerusalem."  There 
is  going  to  be  a  restored  Church  life,  when  the 
redeemed  society  and  the  purified  Church  will 
become  one.  We  need  that  restoration  very 
badly  indeed,  for  there  is  a  sorrowful  spectacle 
in  this  world  of  half-converted  Churches  as  well 
as  of  unconverted  people.  The  Church  of  God 
is  not  made  up,  as  so  many  suppose,  out  of 
organisations  and  endowments  ;  it  is  not  made 
up  out  of  buildings,  services,  and  prayers,  and 
the  regular  duties  which  people  connect  with 
those  things.  The  Church  of  God  is  made  up 
out  of  people  who  have  Christ  dwelling  in  their 


UNION   WITH  GOD 


hearts  ;  and  John  calls  this  Church  "  the  bride 
of  the  Lamb  " ;  he  calls  it  the  "  New  Jerusalem." 
He  says  that  he  had  a  vision,  and  saw  that  it 
was  prepared  like  a  bride  adorned  for  her 
husband. 

Let  us  consider,  then,  this  doctrine  of  the 
bride,  which  is  one  of  the  wonderful  doctrines 
in  the  New  Testament,  one  of  the  most  con- 
soling doctrines  to  believers,  one  of  the  things 
which  make  us  most  hopeful  and  keep  us  from 
discouragement  and  from  sinking  down — the 
doctrine  that  God  has  the  reconstruction  of  the 
individual,  and  of  the  Church,  and  of  the  world 
in  His  own  hands  ;  and  that  He  is  attending  to 
this  business  of  making  the  former  things  pass 
away.  First  of  all,  then,  it  is  not  a  new  doctrine. 
That  is  very  clear  in  the  New  Testament.  Let 
us  look  at  a  passage  or  two.  You  have  it  in 
Rev.  xxi.,  which  I  have  read,  and  also  a  little 
further  back  in  Rev.  xix.  9  :  "  And  he  saith 
unto  me,  Write,  Blessed  are  they  which  are 
called  unto  the  marriage  supper  of  the  Lamb." 

When  you  have  read  that  passage  about  the 
marriage  supper  of  the  Lamb,  you  must  go 
back    into  the  Gospels,   and   read  the  parable 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE  BRIDE        23 

which  it  is  based  upon,  where  it  says  that  a 
certain  man  made  a  wedding  for  his  son  ;  and 
you  will  see  that  the  whole  of  the  Gospel 
invitation  is  connected  with  the  same  figure. 
It  was  not  St.  John  who  invented  it  ;  it  was 
there  before  him. 

St.  Paul  has  the  same  doctrine,  too.  He 
tells  us  that,  with  regard  to  particular  Churches, 
he  had  a  desire  to  present  one  company  of 
believers  to  Christ  as  a  chaste  virgin.  He  also 
tells  us,  with  regard  to  individual  believers,  that 
the  man  who  is  joined  to  the  Lord  is  one  spirit 
with  Him.  Now  you  will  see  that  by  these 
different  figures,  these  figures  which  St.  John, 
and  St.  Paul,  and  the  Evangelists  applied  to 
the  calling  of  the  Christian  Church,  whether 
they  are  speaking  of  the  Church  as  a  whole 
or  whether  they  are  speaking  of  individual 
Churches  or  of  individual  men  and  women, 
they  are  all  aiming  at  one  thing ;  and  that 
thing  is  a  oneness  with  God.  That  is  their 
gospel,  and  that  is  their  aim  ;  and  the  reunion 
of  man  with  God  and  the  will  of  God  is  what 
constitutes  heaven  in  this  life  and  heaven  in 
the   next.     Now  we   are    following   after   that 


24  UNION  WITH  GOD 

oneness.     We   believe   firmly  that    religion  is 
the  marriage  of  the  soul  with  God  :  I  hope  it 
is  not  very  unorthodox  to  say  that.      Perhaps 
people    may    say,    "  Why  don't    you   say    that 
religion    means    being    baptised,     taking     the 
Lord's  Supper,  saying  the  Ten  Commandments, 
and  reading  your  Bible  ?  "     Well,  because  that 
is  not  the  way  in  which  it  is  presented  in  the 
New  Testament.     The  doctrine    of  the   New 
Testament  is  that  man  may  be  reunited  to  his 
Lord  and  Maker,  and  that  every  provision  is 
made  in  grace,  as  well  as  every  adjustment  in 
providence,   to   lead    him   to   that   blessed  and 
gracious  end ;  and  if  you  are  not  one  with  God, 
beloved,   it  is  because  in   some  sense   in  your 
experience   the   former   things  are  not  passed 
away  which  God  means  to  pass  away,  because 
there   is  something  which  you  are  holding  to, 
some    sins    in    which    you    are    immersed,  and 
which  you  are  connected  with,  which  God  has 
condemned,  and  which  you  have  not  disowned. 
But  God  is  calling  us  out  of  these  things,  and 
calls  us  into  pure  life  and  union  with  Himself, 
union  with  God  and  unity  with  the  neighbour, 
a  union   in   which  ill  shall    disappear,    and    in 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE  BRIDE        25 

which  the  pains  and  trials  of  life  shall  by-and-by 
be  altogether  removed,  a  union  which  is  based 
upon  God  and  truth,  for  He  says,  "  Into  that 
holy  city  there  shall  nothing  come  in  which  is 
unholy  or  unclean  "  ;  and  you  may  be  sure  of 
this  :  that  if  there  is  any  measure  of  experience 
in  this  life  to  be  realised  which  is  comparable 
to  the  fulness  of  the  blessing  in  the  next  world, 
it  consists  in  the  excluding  of  the  impure,  and 
unholy,  and  untrue  from  the  heart  and  life,  just 
in  the  same  way  that  God  means  to  banish 
them  from  the  whole  of  the  world.  We  furnish 
a  little  picture  of  the  next  world  as  soon  as  we 
begin  believing  for  a  full  salvation.  I  mean, 
there  is  something  about  the  experience  of  a 
truly  consecrated  child  of  God  which  preaches 
heaven,  which  tells  of  it,  and  which,  in  a  certain 
sense,  justifies  God  for  having  made  the  world. 
For  we  realise  that  God  is  justified  in  having 
made  us  when  we  are  perfectly  subordinate  to 
His  will  and  quite  happy  in  it ;  and  if  He  can 
make  us  so  in  this  life,  well,  that  is  a  little 
picture  of  what  the  joy  in  the  next  world  is 
like. 

Not  only  do  the  Apostles  preach  this  doctrine 


26  UNION  WITH  GOD 

in  the  New   Testament,  but   it  leads   to  some- 
thing further  back  in  the  history  of  the  Church. 
I   am  very  fond  of  tracing  out   the   history — 
what    we    call    the    evolution — of    a    doctrine, 
because   doctrines   do    not    always    just    drop 
down   into  the  world    ready-made.     It    means 
that   God  has   been  unfolding  His  thought  to 
men,  and  they,  with  their  lesser  thoughts,  have 
been  trying  to  apprehend  it,  perhaps  first  from 
one  side  and  then  from  another  side,  until  at 
last  they  arrive  at  some  definite  and  approxi- 
mately final  statement,  and  call  it  "  a  Christian 
doctrine."     And    this  doctrine   of  the  oneness 
which  we  speak  about,  and  which  is  represented 
under  the  figure  of  the  Bridegroom  and  bride, 
is    the   doctrine  which    Jesus   Himself  taught, 
and    which    was    taught    before    Jesus    came. 
When   Jesus  spoke  of  the  wonderful   relation 
in  which   He  stood  to  man — His  affection  for 
the  race  of  man,  and   His  love  for  those  who 
were  in  the   inner  circle  of   His  union  in  this 
world — He  spoke  about   His  relation  to  them 
under  the  same  figure  of  the  Bridegroom.      He 
called  Himself  the   Bridegroom.      If  you  will 
turn  back  to  where  they  asked  John  the  Baptist 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE  BRIDE        27 

whether  he  were  the  Christ,  you  will  see  that 
he  said,  "  No,  I  am  not  the  Christ,  but  I  am 
the  friend  of  the  Bridegroom  "  ;  "  The  friend 
of  the  Bridegroom  stands  and  hears  the  Bride- 
groom's voice,  and  he  rejoices  greatly  because  of 
the  Bridegroom's  voice  ;  and  this  my  joy  "  (that 
is,  the  joy  of  the  friend  of  the  Bridegroom)  "  is 
therefore  a  fulfilled  joy." 

John  the  Baptist  teaches  just  in  the  same 
way  as  St.  Paul,  St.  John,  and  the  Master 
Himself  did.  He  teaches  the  doctrine  of  the 
Bridegroom  and  the  bride  ;  and  he  taught  that 
right  at  the  beginning  of  his  preaching  in  the 
New  Testament.  If  the  forerunner  taught  it, 
it  leads  back  to  something  earlier  still.  It  is 
an  Old  Testament  doctrine  ;  for  over  and  over 
again  you  will  find  the  prophets  teaching  in 
their  message  to  Israel  that  the  Lord  God  was 
wonderfully  in  love  with  His  elect  people,  that 
He  was  wonderfully  full  of  compassion  and 
desire  to  speak  to  their  hearts.  Sometimes  it 
is  personified  in  one  way,  and  sometimes  in 
another  :  "  I  will  allure  her,  and  bring  her  into 
the  wilderness,  and  talk  to.  her  "  ;  "  As  the 
bridegroom  rejoiceth  'over   the  bride,   so  shall 


28  UNION  WITH  GOD 

thy  God  rejoice  over  thee."  And  I  suppose 
that  every  Jew  who  has  studied  or  thought  over 
the  Old  Testament,  knows  the  doctrine  very 
well  that  Israel  was  the  bride  of  Jehovah,  and 
that  He  had  united  Himself  unto  her  in  a 
covenant  of  love,  out  of  which  have  come  all 
the  promises  and  all  the  hopes  of  the  race. 
Well,  if  that  is  so,  what  a  wonderful  change 
Jesus  has  made  in  the  doctrine!  It  is  not  any 
longer  Israel  the  bride  of  Jehovah,  but  He  has 
put  us  in  the  place  of  Israel,  and  Himself  in 
the  place  of  the  Most  High  God.  You  see, 
there  is  no  longer  any  room  for  the  doctrine  of 
Bridegroom  and  bride  on  a  Unitarian  basis. 
You  need  the  Christian  doctrine  in  its  fulness 
to  understand  the  relation  in  which  we  stand  to 
Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord  and  our  Head. 

Well,  that  is  the  history  of  the  doctrine.  It 
has  come  down  out  of  the  past,  out  of  the 
partial  revelation  into  the  full  revelation  of  the 
Gospel  ;  it  has  come  down  out  of  a  message 
to  a  particular  people,  living  in  a  particular 
country  at  that  time  ;  and  it  has  come  now  to 
be  a  message  to  all  people,  all  kindreds,  and 
all  tongues.     It  is  a  message  of  oneness.     Jesus 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE  BRIDE        29 

Speaks  this  message  to  the  Church  at  large. 
To  every  one  who  bears  His  name,  to  all  those 
who  are  gathered  under  all  signs  and  condi- 
tions of  membership,  He  sends  the  message  of 
holiness  and  the  offer  of  reunion  with  Him- 
self. He  sends  it  also  to  particular  Churches. 
Blessed  is  that  Church  on  which  such  a  visita- 
tion comes ;  blessed  is  that  Church  to  which 
God  sends  by  His  servants  a  message  of  a 
closer  walk  with  God  ;  and  nothing  is  worse 
for  any  Church  in  any  community  than  the 
rejection  of  such  a  message  as  is  involved  in 
the  larger  evangelical  promises  of  the  Gospel. 
But  He  also  comes  down  to  the  individual  ; 
and  He  brings  this  sacred  message  of  white 
robes,  and  holy  life,  and  individual  communion 
to  us  at  our  own  doors,  and  tells  us  in  a  cer- 
tain sacred  and  limited  way  that  we  also  are 
united  to  Him  in  the  tender  affection  which  is 
described  in  the  words,  "  As  the  bridegroom 
rejoiceth  over  the  bride,  so  shall  thy  God 
rejoice  over  thee."  If  we  get  to  that,  then 
some  of  the  former  things  are  passed  away.  I 
am  certain  that  that  old  notion  that  God  loved 
people    while    they    were     positively     sinning 


30  UNION  WITH  GOD 


against  Him  is  a  notion  which  needs  interpret- 
ing.    We  do  not  mean  to   say  that   God  does 
not  love  people  ;  but  we  do  have  to  show  that 
there  is  nothing  that   they  can  know  about  it 
practically,  and  that  they  have  no  experimental 
realisation  of  what  God's  care  over  them  means 
in  its  depth  and  fulness,  while  they  are  resist- 
ing the  work  of  God  within.     You  do  not  know 
anything  about  the  hidden  love  of  God  unless 
you  submit  to  God.      If  you  go  on  every  day 
denying  God,  you  must  not  expect  God  to  be 
confessing   you.      He    says,    "  I    confess    them 
that    confess    Me."       I    suppose    we    may    say 
(without    hurting    the    Gospel    or   diminishing 
the  truth  of  the  message)  that  He  loves  them 
that   love    Him.       We    have    to    confess    and 
harmonise  with    Him,  and  submit  ;  and  many 
things  have  to  be  put  away  before  we  can  be 
addressed  in  language  like  the  prophets  repre- 
sented God  as  using  to  those  who  are  nearest 
to  Him.      If  you  are  going  to  live  in  the  inner 
circle — and    I   do    not   understand   a  man    not 
wanting  to  live  as  near  to  God  as  he  can — you 
are  not  going  to  do  that  and  live  in  the  inner 
circle  of  the  world's  affections  at  the  same  time. 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND   THE  BRIDE        31 

This  is  no  "  Sunday  "  Jesus  that  we  are  offering 
you,  no  "  CHURCH-TIME "  Jesus ;  this  is  the 
"working-day"  Christ — One  who  lives  with 
us,  who  tabernacles  under  our  roof,  we  may- 
say,  much  in  the  same  way  as  He  tabernacled 
in  our  flesh  and  blood  so  many  years  ago — One 
who  says,  "  I  will  dwell  in  them,  and  I  will 
walk  in  them  ;  they  shall  be  My  people,  and  I 
will  be  their  God." 

Now  this  is  a  great  message,  beloved  !  The 
people  who  talk  to  us  about  reform  do  not 
strike  down  as  deep  into  the  nature  of  things 
as  this.  I  hope  I  am  a  good  reformer,  in  the 
right  sense  of  the  word.  I  want  to  see  every- 
thing wrong  put  right — "strikes,"  and  all  the 
rest  of  it.  But  the  worst  strike  in  the  world  is 
the  strike  against  the  will  of  God  ;  the  most 
terrible  lock-out  is  when  we  resist  blessedness 
and  find  presently  that  the  Master  of  the  house 
hath  shut  to  the  door.  Our  defect  lies  in  our 
want  of  submission  to  God's  law  within.  It  is 
the  non-recognition  of  the  promise  which  He 
has  made  to  us  to  restore  harmony  in  the 
creature.  You  and  I  may  have  that  harmony. 
If  we  don't   have   it  ourselves,  we  shall  have 


32  UNION  WITH  GOD 

very  little  heart  for  preaching  any  other  gospel. 
You  won't  convert  sinners  to  any  remarkable 
extent  unless  you  have  the  doctrine  of  union 
with  God  to  fall  back  upon.  You  may  start 
any  number  of  "  Pleasant  Sunday  Afternoons  " 
(God  bless  them  !) ;  but  unless  you  have  got 
something  in  the  shape  of  a  union  with  God, 
which  is  a  blessing  from  Sunday  to  Saturday, 
you  have  not  got  the  right  thing.  We  build 
on  union.  Our  Gospel  flows  out  from  it,  to 
preach  things  which  we  know,  things  which  we 
taste  and  handle,  of  the  Word  of  life.  That  is 
the  real  blessing  of  the  Gospel  message  ;  and 
if  we  have  got  a  message  for  the  people,  and 
are  able  to  bring  sinners  in,  you  know  quite  as 
well  as  I  do  (and  perhaps  a  great  deal  better, 
if  you  are  in  the  work  all  the  time)  that  there 
is  nothing  saves  people  so  quickly  as  the 
preaching  of  a  high  Gospel.  Let  people  know 
that  we  have  got  something,  and  that  God  has 
given  it.  I  know  that  is  orthodox,  because  I 
have  got  a  sentence  that  bears  on  it  out  of 
Wesley.  Wesley  says,  "  When  Christian  per- 
fection is  not  strongly  and  explicitly  preached, 
there  is  very  seldom  any  remarkable  blessing 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE  BRIDE        ii 

from  God."  And  he  also  says,  "  Until  you 
press  believers  to  accept  full  salvation  7tozv,  you 
must  not  look  for  any  revival."  I  am  afraid 
many  people  have  been  making  a  mistake. 
They  have  thought  the  proper  thing  to  do  was 
to  try  and  get  sinners  clean  first,  and  saints 
afterwards.  But  I  very  much  question  whether 
it  is  not  exactly  the  opposite,  and  believe  that 
the  place  to  begin  is  the  twenty-first  chapter  of 
the  Apocalypse,  where  John  says,  "  I  saw  a 
new  Jerusalem  "  first,  and  afterwards  goes  on 
to  say,  "  Behold,  .the  tabernacle  of  God  is  with 
men."  A  clean  Church  always  means  a  clean 
world  in  proportion  as  it  is  a  clean  Church  ; 
and  if  you  are  in  harmony  with  God,  people 
know  it.  They  know  the  white  robes  you 
wear  ;  they  know  where  they  came  from  ;  they 
know  they  are  the  gift  of  God's  grace  to  your 
faith  ;  they  know  that  the  smile  you  carry  is 
not  a  manufactured  smile,  made  up  for  an 
occasion,  but  that  it  belongs  to  you  as  a  part 
of  your  renewed  nature  ;  they  know  that  your 
compassion  is  not  the  compassion  of  the 
"  charity-box,"  but  that  it  is  brotherly  love 
which   makes  you  help  people,  and  that  what 

3 


/ 


/ 

34  UNION  WITH  GOD 

makes  the  brotherly  love  is  Christ  within. 
Now,  if  you  have  got  Him  within,  you  will  be 
able  to  show  Him  forth.  This  Saviour  offers 
us  full  redemption,  but  He  only  does  it  on  His 
own  terms.  You  may  have  everything  for 
everything — the  exchange  rules  all.  You  may 
have  His  presence  continually  ;  you  may  have 
peace  flowing  through  you  like  a  river  ;  you 
may  have  sin  under  your  foot ;  but  you  must 
have  Him  in  your  heart  to  do  it.  And  there 
is  no  other  holiness  that  is  worth  preaching 
except  that  which  means  that  God  reigns  within 
and  has  accomplished  the  reunion  and  made 
former  things  pass  away.  How  many  things, 
maybe,  you  want  to  get  rid  of!  How  much 
has  come  down  out  of  the  past,  the  inheritance 
of  the  race  !  I  think  no  people  are  so  much  to 
be  pitied  as  those  who  have  strongly  marked 
sins  brought  into  life  with  them,  and  which, 
you  may  say,  in  one  sense,  they  are  not 
responsible  for.  Well,  their  case  would  be 
most  miserable,  as  our  case  would  too,  if  those 
evils  which  we  see  in  our  flesh  were  not  the 
very  arena  in  which  the  power  of  God  is  mani- 
fested.    I  mean,  if  we  have  not  a  gospel  against 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND   THE  BRIDE        35 

heredity,  I  shall  begin  to  doubt  whether  we 
have  a  gospel  at  all.  God  deals  with  heredity. 
If  your  mother  or  father  or  grandmother  or 
grandfather  had  a  bad  temper,  and  you  have 
been  saddled  with  that  bad  temper  all  your  life, 
if  you  will  come  to  God  in  lowly  penitence  and 
faith,  there  is  grace  enough  to  cure  it  and  power 
enough  to  give  you  such  a  redemption  that 
generations  of  previous  sin  shall  not  prevent 
nor  undo  the  work  which  the  Blessed  One  is 
able  to  do  in  your  soul.  I  say  that  would  be  a 
very  impossible  gospel  to  preach  if  it  were  not 
that  we  had  the  doctrine  in  the  New  Testament, 
and  a  great  many  witnesses  rising  up  to  say  it 
is  true.  There  are  hardly  any  of  us  that  have 
a  vital  message  to  the  world  that  have  not 
been  saved  from  something  or  other  that  we 
brought  into  the  world  with  us.  Probably  we 
have  traced  it  back,  and  have  found  where  it 
came  from  ;  and  we  have  gone  to  God  to  get 
the  deliverance,  and  He  has  given  it  to  us, 
given  us  the  power  and  ability  to  make  the 
former  things  pass  away  ;  and  when  He  makes 
the  former  things  pass  away  in  our  lives,  I  say 
that  is  a  kind  of  bridal  experience  :  it  is  ability 


36  UNION  WITH  GOD 

to  work  for  Him,  to  suffer  for  Him  (because 
the  bride  that  does  not  suffer  for  her  lord  is  not 
worth  much)  ;  it  is  the  power  to  bear  the  cross 
and  the  burden  and  heat  of  the  day.  God 
gives  it  to  us  ;  it  is  something  which  has  come 
down  to  us  out  of  heaven  from  God.  Praise 
His  name  that  there  is  such  a  salvation  !  And 
you  and  I,  beloved,  may  have  it.  It  does  not 
matter  if  they  call  us  bad  names  so  long  as  we 
get  it.  You  may  be  called  a  "  Perfectionist  " 
for  preaching  Christ  to  the  full  ;  but  if  He 
dwells  within,  it  won't  hurt  you,  and  you  won't 
bear  any  ill-will  against  the  people  that  give 
you  the  name.  "If  they  have  persecuted  Me," 
He  says  to  His  bride,  "they  will  also  persecute 
you."  The  way  they  persecuted  Him  was, 
amongst  other  things,  by  crucifying  Him. 
Does  He  mean,  if  they  crucified  Him,  they 
will  also  crucify  her  ?  Well,  they  will  try  their 
hands  at  it  ;  but  when  they  try,  they  will  find 
that  every  blow  which  is  aimed  at  an  indwelling 
"Christ  will  fall  short  of  its  mark  just  as  certainly 
as  blows  did  which  were  aimed  at  Christ  in 
the  flesh.  None  conquered  Him  ;  He  rose 
victorious  over  all.     The  very  cross  itself  was 


THE  BRIDEGROOM  AND  THE  BRIDE        t.-j 

a  ladder  up  into  paradise  ;  and  God  will  make 
our  trials  ladders  up  to  heaven  if  we  will  only 
bear  them  with  Jesus  ;  but  apart  from  Him  we 
can  do  and  bear  nothing  ;  without  Him  there 
is  no  hope,  no  comfort,  no  New  Jerusalem,  no 
restored  social  order,  happiness,  or  joy  within  ; 
we  enjoy  these  things  on  the  condition  of  that 
sacred  companionship,  even  as  our  Lord  said, 
"  I  in  them,  and  Thou  in  Me,  that  they  may  be 
made  perfect  in  one,  and  that  the  world  may 
believe  that  Thou,  Father,  hast  sent  Me." 


Ill 

UNION  WITH  A    PR  A  YING  SA  VIOUR 


"  /  pray  for  them  :  I  pray  not  for  the  world,  hit  for  them  which 
Thou  hast  given  Me  ;  for  they  are  Thine.  And  all  Mine  are  Thine, 
and  Thine  are  Mine  ;  and  I  am  glorified  in  them.  And  nnv  I  atii  no 
more  in  the  world,  but  these  are  in  the  world,  and  I  come  to  Thee. 
Holy  Father,  keep  through  Thine  own  name  those  whom  Thou  hast 
given  Me,  that  they  may  be  one,  as  we  are.  While  I  was  with  them 
in  the  ivorld,  I  kept  them  in  Thy  name  :  those  that  Thou  gavest  'Me  I 
have  kept,  aitd  none  of  them  is  lost,  but  the  son  of  perdition  ;  that  the 
Scripture  ?>iight  be  fulfilled.  And  now  come  I  to  Thee ;  and  these 
things  I  speak  in  the  world,  that  they  viight  have  My  Joy  fulfilled  in 
themselves.  I  have  given  them  Thy  word  ;  and  the  world  hath  hated 
them,  because  they  are  not  of  the  world,  even  as  I  am  not  of  the  world. 
I  pray  not  that  Thou  shouldesf  take  them  out  of  the  world,  but  that  Thou 
shonldest  keep  the?n  from  evil.  They  are  not  of  the  world,  even  as  I 
am  not  of  the  world.  Sanctify  them  through  Thy  truth :  Thy  word  is 
truth.  As  Thou  hast  sent  Me  into  the  world,  even  so  have  I  also  sent 
them  into  the  world.  And  for  their  sakes  I  sanctify  Myself,  that  they 
also  might  be  sanctified  through  the  truth.  Neither  pray  I  for  these 
alone,  but  for  them  also  which  shall  believe  on  Me  throtigh  their  word ; 
that  they  all  may  be  one  ;  as  Thou,  Father,  art  in  Me,  and  I  in  Thee, 
that  they  also  may  be  one  in  us  :  that  the  world  7nay  believe  that  Thou 
hast  sent  Me.  And  the  glory  which  Thou  gavest  Me  I  have  given 
them  ;  that  they  may  be  one,  even  as  we  are  one :  I  in  them,  and  Thou 
in  Me,  that  they  may  be  made  perfect  in  one  ;  and  that  the  world  may 
know  that  Thou  hast  sent  Me,  and  hast  loved  them,  as  Thou  hast  loved 
Me.  Father,  I  will  that  they  also,  whom  Thou  hast  given  Me,  be  with 
Me  where  I  atn  ;  that  they  may  behold  My  glory,  which  Thou  hast 
given  Me :  for  Tho2i  lovedst  Me  before  the  foundation  of  the  world. 
O  righteo7is  Father,  the  world  hath  not  known  Thee :  but  I  have  known 
Thee,  and  these  have  knozun  that  Thou  hast  sent  Ale.  And  I  have 
declared  unto  them  Thy  name,  and  will  declare  it:  that  the  love 
wherewith  Thou  hast  loved  Ale  may  be  in  thetn,  and  I  in  them." — ^JOHN 
xvii.  9-26. 


Ill 

UNION  WITH  A  PRAYING  SAVIOUR 

MY  subject  is  in  general  the  intercession 
of  our  Lord  Jesus,  and  in  particular 
the  relation  of  the  intercession  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  to  our  personal  sanctification. 

Now  we  may  be  sure  of  this  :  that,  whatever 
else  the  Lord  Christ  was,  He  was  a  praying 
Man.  Whatever  were  the  relations  of  the 
Sacred  Humanity  to  the  Father,  we  are  quite 
sure  that  when  He  was  on  earth  those  sacred 
lips  moved  in  prayer,  and  those  sacred  knees 
bent  in  prayer,  and  those  holy  hands  were 
lifted  up  for  the  men  and  the  women  that  were 
in  the  world  ;  and  we  know  that  there  is  no 
criticism  whatever  that  will  touch  that  question. 
Criticism  may  sometimes  be  able  to  say  that 
a  verse  here  or  a  sentence  there  has  been 
added   to   the   text    and    does   not    form    the 


42  UNION  WITH  GOD 

original  course  of  a  Gospel  or  of  an  Epistle  ; 
but  criticism  will  never  criticise  away  Jesus 
Christ's  prayerfulness,  and  those  prayers  of  His 
will  never  be  reduced  to  "  nothingness,"  as  if 
they  were  the  passing  words  of  one  generation, 
and  not  meant  for  all  generations. 

Well,  we  have  this  praying  Christ.  And 
when  we  come  to  read  what  He  said  and  to 
understand  a  little  of  it,  we  find,  to  our  great 
satisfaction  and  delight,  that  He  is  very  closely 
related  to  our  spiritual  advance  in  the  prayers 
that  He  prayed,  and  that  we  can  be  sanctified 
by  Jesus  Christ's  prayers,  just  in  the  same  way 
as  we  are  sanctified  by  a  right  belief  in  and  an 
absolute  devotion  to  His  cross. 

I  have  been  very  interested  from  time  to 
time  lately  in  studying  the  way  in  which  the 
whole  life  of  Christ  is  the  teacher  of  holiness. 
All  the  situations  of  His  life  and  all  the  teaching 
of  His  lips  express  one  purpose — namely,  the 
restoration  of  the  image  of  God  in  man.  That 
is  what  He  came  for,  beloved.  Whatever  else 
other  people  preach,  Jesus  Christ  never  preached 
any  half-gospel ;  He  neither  gave  us  a  deficient 
calling,  nor  offered  to  us  a  measure  of  grace 


UNION  WITH  A    PRAYING  SAVIOUR        43 

that  was  insufficient  for  the  calling.  He  never 
preached  a  series  of  impossibilities  and  offered 
them  to  you  so  that  you  might  take  hold  of 
them  as  though  they  were  possibilities,  and 
then  be  deceived  and  disappointed  by  having 
taken  hold  of  something  which  would  not  bear 
your  weight.  It  is  quite  possible  to  have 
holiness  teaching  of  a  sentimental  sort  that 
will  not  stand  a  day  of  trial  or  a  time  of  cross, 
but  Jesus  Christ's  preaching  of  holiness  is  not 
sentimental  holiness ;  it  is  not  the  holiness 
which  is  meant  to  make  people  happy  in 
meetings  and  unhappy  out  of  meetings.  It 
is  the  holiness  which  is  meant  to  swim  the 
dark  river  with,  and  to  carry  us  over  every 
big  stream  of  trial  and  difficulty  that  we  may 
have  to  pass  ;  it  is  the  holiness  which  is  meant 
to  be  an  experience  for  the  cloudy  and  dark 
day,  which  will  keep  our  testimony  bright,  and 
which  will  keep  us  true,  loyal,  and  happy,  and 
full  of  the  gracious  Spirit.  Such  was  the 
holiness  of  Christ,  and  of  this  holiness  those 
that  believe  are  made  partakers.  Christ's  life 
is  the  restored  image  of  God  in  man,  and  all 
the  situations  of  that  life  are  of  the  nature  of 


44  UNION  WITH  GOD 

gospel  ;  but  His  prayers  in  particular  are  full 
of  the  message  which  is  involved  in  His  life. 
Let  us  then  praise  God  for  a  praying  Saviour. 

Now  these  great  prayers  of  our  Lord  are 
largely  sanctification  prayers,  because,  of  course, 
our  Lord  could  not  stop  with  blessing  us  half- 
way. What  you  call  the  "Lord's  Prayer"  is  a 
sanctification  prayer.  A  man  can  be  sanctified 
on  "  Thy  kingdom  come,"  and  he  can  be 
sanctified  on  "  Thy  will  be  done."  Some 
people  will  never  be  sanctified  until  they  pray, 
"  Forgive,  because  I  have  forgiven  "  ;  and  we 
can  be  brought  into  the  experience  of  the 
highest  knowledge  of  God  and  harmony  with 
God  if  we  learn  rightly  how  to  pray,  "  Deliver 
us  from  evil,  for  Thine  is  the  kingdom  "  :  only, 
whichever  petition  we  adopt,  we  must  mean  it 
when  we  pray,  like  Jesus  meant  it  when  He 
prayed ;  and  we  must  not  put  in  a  little  caution 
and  say,  "  But  I  know  that  there  are  some 
kinds  of  evils  so  deeply  ingrained  in  human 
nature  that  Christ's  prayers  do  not  apply  to 
them,  nor  Christ's  power." 

Some  people  call  the  seventeenth  chapter  of 
St.   John  the  Lord's   Prayer,  because   it   is  in 


UNION  WITH  A    PRAYING  SAVIOUR        45 

some  ways  wider  and  deeper  than  the  prayer 
which  we  commonly  use  in  our  churches  and 
meetings  ;  and  yet,  beloved,  it  is  not  a  very 
different  prayer.  It  is  the  same  kind  of 
praying.  It  is  a  prayer  that  desires  to  com- 
pass this  full  salvation  and  bring  the  believer 
up  to  the  mark  which  Christ  has  set  as  the 
high-water  mark  of  his  salvation.  And  that 
high-water  mark  of  Christ's  prayers  and  of 
Christ's  belief  for  us  in  salvation  is  a  long  way 
up  above  the  creeds  and  confessions  which 
men  have  made  up,  largely  out  of  their  own 
experience.  You  cannot,  for  instance,  read 
this  chapter,  where  the  Lord  prays  that  they 
may  be  truly  sanctified,  and  that  they  may  be 
one  with  Him,  and  that  they  may  be  kept 
from  the  evil,  and  so  on,  and  then  turn  round 
and  recite  to  yourself  the  confession  that  no 
man  since  the  Fall  is  able  to  perfectly  please 
God,  but  must  daily  displease  Him  in  word, 
and  in  thought,  and  in  deed.  I  am  quite  sure 
that  the  Westminster  Confession,  however 
useful  a  document  it  is  in  other  senses,  goes 
to  shreds  before  the  burning  zeal  of  our  Lord's 
desire   for  us ;  and   so  does   all    teaching    that 


46  UNION  WITH  GOD 

is  of  the  same  kind.  The  teaching  and  preach- 
ing which  looks  at  the  sinner  from  the  side 
of  the  Fall  instead  of  from  the  side  of  the 
Redemption  withers  away  when  the  glory  of 
God  appears  in  man,  and  when  the  promises  of 
God  shine  out  from  the  heaven  of  His  love, 
and  when  He  tells  us  the  length,  and  breadth, 
and  height  of  His  salvation,  and  what  He  has 
offered  to  do  for  those  that  believe  in  Him. 

We  have,  then,  these  prayers  of  Jesus.  Let 
us  see  where  they  will  take  us.  They  are 
connected,  as  I  said,  very  closely  with  the 
subject  of  our  sanctification.  There  is  an 
intercessory  Spirit  abroad  in  the  world,  and 
there  was  an  intercessory  Spirit  in  the  person 
of  the  Well-beloved.  Perhaps  we  may  say  that 
the  first  suggestion  which  we  have  in  the 
history  of  creation  of  the  Spirit  of  God  brooding 
over  the  face  of  the  waters  is  a  kind  of  inter- 
cession ;  God  brooding  over  chaos  and  disorder. 
It  is  His  nature  to  do  it,  and  we  are  all  of  us 
more  or  less  in  the  chaos  until  the  kingdom  of 
God  shall  come.  What  puts  us  right  is  the 
spreading  out  of  the  holy  wings  of  Divine 
intercession  over  us,  the  love  of  God  for  the 


UNION  WITH  A   PRAYING  SAVIOUR       47 

creature,  the  Spirit  of  God  descending,  and 
moving,  and  working,  and  pitying  those  of  us 
who  are  out  of  the  heavenly  way  ;  and  so  when 
our  Lord  came  on  earth  He  came  with  the 
wings  of  the  creating  Spirit,  He  came  with 
wings  of  heaUng.  The  prophecy  says  of  Him, 
"  But  unto  you  that  fear  My  name  shall  the 
Sun  of  righteousness  arise  with  healing  in  His 
wings."  An  old  Quaker  two  hundred  years  ago, 
describing  his  experience  of  the  kingdom  of 
God,  said  he  had  felt  the  healing  drop  from  His 
wings. ^  Certainly  something  like  that  happens 
to  us.  The  sense  of  God's  presence  and  of  His 
power  ;  the  beautiful  knowledge  of  the  life  of 
God  in  the  soul  of  man  ;  the  predictions  which 
God  has  uttered  over  His  new  creation, — these 
things  are  our  health  and  our  strength  when 
we  take  them  in,  while  life  more  abundant 
is  given  to  us  from  day  to  day,  that  we  may 
know  we  live  by  God  and  that  there  is  no  other 
way  in  which  a  man  is  ever  going  to  live  rightly. 


'  Isaac  Penington:  "I  have  felt  the  healings  drop  upon 
my  soul  from  under  His  wings  ;  I  have  met  with  the  true 
knowledge,  the  knowledge  of  life,  ,  .  .  and  this  hath  had  the 
true  virtue  in  it." 


48  UNION  WITH  GOD 

When  our  dear  Lord  reproved  the  Jews  for 
having  refused  His  message,  He  said,  "  O  Jeru- 
salem, Jerusalem,  .  .  .  how  often  would  I  have 
gathered  thy  children  together  as  a  hen  doth 
gather  her  brood  under  her  wings  !  "  That  is 
what  we  call  intercession,  that  spirit  of  pitying 
love,  that  spirit  of  gathering  love  and  controlling 
care  and  power.  With  this  spirit  our  Lord  was 
filled. 

Now  just  as  Christ  shows  this  spirit  in  its 
fulness,  so  every  believing  child  has  a  measure 
of  it.  If  you  are  His,  you  know  what  I  mean. 
When  you  were  brought  to  the  Lord,  one  of 
your  instincts  was  to  go  and  spread  your  wings 
over  the  needs  of  somebody  else  (it  may  be 
some  of  you  have  got  pretty  large  wings  by  this 
time,  and  you  are  able  to  pray  for  a  good  many 
people  and  bring  a  great  many  under  the  sense 
of  God's  presence  and  power)  ;  and  by  that 
fact,  that  you  were  made  an  interceding  being, 
a  praying  being,  you  proved  your  unity  with 
God  in  Christ  more  than  by  any  other  con- 
fession ;  yes,  a  great  deal  more  than  by  merely 
standing  up  in  a  meeting  to  speak,  which  may 
be  a  very  little  thing.     Our  conversion  to  God 


UNION  WITH  A    PRAYING   SAVIOUR       49 

made  us  members  of  the  body  of  an  interceding 
Christ.  We  not  only  confess  that  "  Christ 
Hveth  in  me,"  but  are  also  aware  that  "Christ 
prayeth  in  me." 

An  old  Christian  father  says  that  a  Christian 
brother  should  sometimes  say  to  another  brother, 
"  Come  and  lay  thy  hands  upon  my  head,  and 
bless  me  "  ;  and  I  am  sure  we  do  that.  We 
know  what  St.  Paul  meant  when  he  said, 
"  Brethren,  pray  for  us,"  and  we  are  constantly 
helped  and  blessed  by  the  visitation  which 
comes  to  us  through  the  intercessions  of  other 
people.  Every  child  of  God  has  a  measure 
of  this  spirit  of  intercession  ;  and  I  speak  for 
myself  when  I  say  I  do  not  know  anything  that 
I  have  ever  enjoyed  in  the  kingdom  of  God  but 
that  I  have  received  it  in  measure  through  the 
spirit  of  intercession  which  God  has  manifested 
in  some  of  His  dear  children.  Surely  that 
prayer-life  is  the  life  of  the  child  of  God,  as  it 
was  the  life  of  our  Lord   Himself. 

Now  when  Jesus  prays  for  His  disciples, 
you  will  not  be  surprised  that  His  prayer 
exhibits  the  marks  of  universality.  It  is  not 
unreasonable  for  us  to  suppose   that  what  we 

4 


50  UNION   WITH  GOD 

hear  from  Him  should  have  in  it  something 
of  the  nature  and  substance  of  eternity  ;  and 
we  may  say  that  this  particular  prayer  in  the 
seventeenth  chapter  of  St.  John  is  an  instance. 
But  all  the  prayers  of  our  Lord  are  singularly 
timeless.  Each  particular  prayer  is  also  a 
universal  prayer.  Everybody  is  under  the 
prayers  of  Jesus,  whether  he  knows  it  or  not. 

Every  sinner  has  been  prayed  for,  right  to 
the  end  of  time.  Do  you  suppose  that  the 
praying  brethren  who  may  come  and  kneel 
with  you  in  public,  or  who  may  intercede  for 
you  in  secret,  would  do  you  very  much  good 
unless  there  were  some  larger  praying  going  on 
somewhere  ?  We  are  hardly  able  to  express 
our  own  desires  to  God,  and  find  it  still  more 
difficult  to  express  other  people's.  The  help- 
fulness of  these  prayers  is  that  they  lean  on 
the  prayers  which  Jesus  prayed.  Every  sinner 
is  under  them.  "  Father,"  said  He,  "  forgive 
them  ;  they  do  not  know  what  they  are  doing." 
Is  that  a  time  prayer  or  an  eternity  prayer? 
Shall  we  limit  that  prayer,  and  say  it  applies 
only  to  the  band  of  Roman  soldiers,  or  to  that 
handful  of  scribes  and  Pharisees,  or  even  to  the 


UNION  WITH  A   PRAYING   SAVIOUR       51 

Jerusalem  crowd  ?  Was  it  not  designed  for 
the  people  in  our  midst  and  around  us  who  may 
be  denying  Him  to-day,  far  larger  and  more 
needy  crowds  than  those  that  gathered  around 
Him  in  the  days  of  His  flesh  ? 

Every  timid  soul  is  also  under  the  prayers 
of  Jesus.  He  said  to  Peter,  "  I  pray  for  thee, 
that  thy  faith  fail  not."  Then  when  Peter  fell, 
you  know,  he  fell  softly,  because  he  fell  on  that 
prayer.  It  was  a  good  thing  he  had  that  prayer 
to  fall  upon  ;  and  if  he  had  been  held  up,  as 
he  might  have  been,  it  would  have  been  by 
holding  on  to  that  prayer.  And  if  you  are 
tempted  and  tried,  and  your  will  is  being  con- 
strained to  something  outside  the  will  of  God, 
and  you  are  drifting  from  the  Divine  harmony 
instead  of  being  swept  into  it,  as  you  ought  to 
be — if  you  are  in  that  state  of  trial,  and  difficulty, 
and  tribulation,  and  danger,  shall  we  shrink  up 
that  little  prayer  to  Peter,  or  shall  we  not  say 
that  in  Peter  our  eternal  Lord  prayed  for  all 
who  might  have  Peter's  thoughts  and  Peter's 
temptations,  and  that  if  it  should  happen  that 
any  of  you  are  to-day  likely  to  be  ashamed  of 
Christ,  the  same  petition  and  the  same  burning 


52  UNION  WITH  GOD 

care  and  love  goes  out  for  you,  and  that  He 
can  keep  you,  and  that  His  prayers  hold  you, 
and  that  God  has  gone  out  in  Christ  towards 
all  poor  timid  souls  to  the  very  end  of  time  ? 

And  not  only  the  timid  people  and  the  sinful 
people,  but  the  believing  people,  are  under 
Christ's  prayers.  The  man  that  hungers  and 
thirsts  after  righteousness  comes  under  Christ's 
prayer.  What  prayer  is  that  ?  This  prayer, 
beloved :  "  I  will  pray  the  Father,  and  He 
shall  give  you  another  Comforter,  that  He  may 
abide  with  you  for  ever,  even  the  Spirit  of 
truth,  whom  the  world  does  not  receive,  because 
it  seeth  Him  not,  neither  knoweth  Him ;  but 
ye  know  Him,  for  He  dwelleth  with  you,  and 
shall  be  in  you."  Note  the  two  stages  of  the 
indwelling  of  the  Holy  Ghost  :  "  He  dwelleth 
with  you,  and  shall  be  in  you."  When  you 
are  hungering  and  thirsting,  therefore,  and  are 
wanting  a  deeper  life  in  God,  and  when  your 
mind  has  been  touched  on  the  subject  of 
holiness,  either  because  you  have  seen  it  in  the 
Scriptures,  or  because  you  have  seen  it  shine 
out  in  the  lives  and  from  the  lips  of  some  dear 
brethren  and  sisters  in   God,   or  even  if  you 


UNION  WITH  A  PRAYING  SAVIOUR        53 

have  never  seen  it  anywhere,  only  you  have 
been  inwardly  convinced  that  it  must  be  some- 
where— when  you  get  that  sweet  conviction 
coming  upon  you,  the  conviction  of  the  possi- 
bility of  sanctification,  then  you  have  the  prayer 
of  Jesus  like  a  sacred  dove  spread  over  you. 
This  prayer  is  balancing  itself,  as  it  were,  over 
your  spirit.  You  are  receiving  the  revelation 
of  an  unclaimed  promise  of  God,  which  rests 
upon  you  just  as  certainly  as  it  rested  upon  the 
saints  in  the  olden  time  who  went  apart  to 
plead  and  claim  the  fulfilment  of  it  for  them- 
selves and  for  the  world  in  which  they  lived. 
Shall  we  let  that  promise  shrink  up  and  say  it 
only  applies  to  the  hundred  and  twenty  chosen 
people — Mary  the  mother  of  Jesus,  Peter,  and 
James,  and  John,  and  the  rest,  down  to 
Matthias,  and  a  little  balance  to  make  up  the 
number  and  total  of  the  first  Church  ?  Shall 
we  let  that  promise  be  limited  to  a  few?  or  is  it 
not  a  prayer  which  claims  all  His  own  people, 
and  all  people  that  are  longing  after  holiness, 
and  all  those  who  are  tired  of  themselves  and 
anxious  to  find  rest  in  God  ?  That  prayer  must 
be  our  prayer  ;  and  it  is  a  prayer  which  is  over 


54  UNION  WITH  GOD 

US  and  for  us  to-day.  You  see  what  a  blessing 
it  is  to  have  a  praying  Saviour.  We  are  very 
glad  when  the  spirit  of  prayer  is  poured  out  on 
a  community  or  in  a  meeting,  as  we  know  it 
always  means  good  ;  but  we  may  remember 
that  there  is  one  Person  who  never  is  wanting 
in  the  spirit  of  prayer :  it  was  always  poured 
out  upon  Him  ;  it  was  always  as  incense  rising 
to  the  Father  from  His  life ;  and  it  has  always 
been  a  blessing  descending  on  mankind  since 
He  ascended  to  the  glory. 

We  have  then  such  a  High-priest  and  some 
knowledge  of  His  intercession.  This  prayer  is 
called  the  High-priestly  prayer  of  Jesus.  It  is 
not  altogether  wrong.  There  is  a  great  deal 
in  the  New  Testament  which  shows  that  our 
Lord  did  take  what  we  call  a  high-priestly 
position  towards  His  Church.  It  was  very 
natural  that  He  should  do  so,  because  in  the 
Jewish  Church  there  were  days  in  the  year  on 
which  all  the  hopes  of  the  people  centred  around 
the  motions  and  actions  of  one  elect  person. 
That  sacred  person  was  set  aside  perhaps  by 
election,  or  in  other  ways,  according  to  the 
different    times    in    the  history  of  the  people. 


UNION  WITH  A    PRAYING   SAVIOUR        55 

That  sacred  person  on  the  day  of  atonement 
drew  to  himself,  as  it  were,  the  whole  sins  and 
errors  of  the  people,  and  presented  them  before 
God  in  the  holy  place.  That  was  the  solemn 
day,  the  most  solemn  day,  of  the  whole  Jewish 
year.  The  Passover  day  is  not  anything  like 
it  in  respect  of  solemnity.  For  on  that  day, 
when  the  high-priest  comes  into  the  holy  place 
to  perform  his  ritual  and  to  present  his  petition 
before  the  mercy-seat,  when  he  comes  forth 
from  his  interview  with  God,  he  comes  out, 
and  he  speaks  over  the  people  these  words  of 
blessing — "  Now  ye  are  clean  "  ;  and  those  are 
the  words  which  you  find  in  the  beginning  of 
the  fifteenth  chapter  of  St.  John,  where  Jesus 
says  to  His  disciples,  ''Now  ye  are  clean 
through  the  word  which  /  have  spoken  unto 
you."  It  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  our  Lord 
used  such  words  as  these  that  He  wished  them 
to  recognise  Him  as  occupying  a  high-priestly 
relation  to  themselves — a  relation  of  One  who 
could  intercede  for  them  with  the  Father,  and 
who  could  bring  them  back  promises  of  God  from 
the  presence  into  which  He  entered.  Now  that 
thought  is,  of  course,  all  through  the  New  Testa- 


56  UNION  WITH  GOD 

ment.  The  disciples  were  not  slow  to  catch 
the  idea  ;  they  took  it,  and  they  worked  it  out. 
When  St.  John  saw  his  great  vision  in 
Patmos,  he  tells  us  that  he  saw  our  Lord 
"  clothed  "  (as  it  says  in  our  Bible)  "  in  a  vesture 
down  to  the  foot."  If  you  look  into  the  original, 
you  will  see  that  the  word  that  was  used  for 
this  vesture  that  went  down  to  the  foot  is  the 
same  word  which  is  used  for  the  high-priestly 
dress  ;  we  may  represent  the  idea  of  what  he 
saw  by  translating  his  words,  "  I  saw  Him  in 
His  priestly  raiment."  That  is,  he  saw  Him 
carrying  on  His  concern  for  humanity  in  the 
risen  life  ;  and  we  believe  that,  and  we  know 
that  it  must  be  true.  In  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  we  have  the  same  thought :  "  For  we 
have  not  a  High-priest  which  cannot  be  touched 
with  the  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  but  was  in 
all  points  tempted  like  as  we  are,  yet  without 
sin.  Let  us  therefore  come  boldly  unto  the 
throne  of  grace,  that  we  may  obtain  mercy  and 
find  grace  to  help  in  time  of  need."  And  so 
in  many  other  passages.  Now  turn  to  your 
chapter  in  St.  John,  and  say  to  yourselves,  "  I 
want  all   the   precious    things    that    Jesus    the 


UNION   WITH  A    PRAYING   SAVIOUR        57 

High-priest  prayed  for  to  be  fulfilled  in  me." 
That  is  not  a  presumptuous  position  to  take. 
We  don't  want  to  disappoint  Him.  Of  course 
it  may  cause  you  some  disappointment  your- 
selves. You  cannot  please  everybody  ;  you 
cannot  please  God  and  please  yourselves  ;  you 
cannot  please  God  and  please  your  neighbour, 
not  altogether  ;  but  you  can  please  God,  and 
you  can  please  God  in  allowing  the  prayers  of 
Jesus  to  be  fulfilled  in  your  experience.  That 
is  part  of  your  privilege  in  Him.  Now,  first 
of  all,  be  quite  sure  that  He  really  did  pray  for 
you  individually,  and  in  order  to  sanctify  you. 
He  says,  "  Neither  pray  I  for  these  alone,  but 
for  them  also  which  shall  believe  on  Me  through 
their  word."  You  see  the  prolongation  of 
Christ's  prayer.  You  were  in  it,  beloved. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  that.  That  is  one  of 
the  wonderful  things  that  make  us  believe  so 
in  Jesus  Christ.  I  can  pray  for  my  people  ;  I 
can  pray  for  their  friends  and  for  their  children  ; 
but  my  power  of  prayer  does  not  embrace  the 
great  inheritance  of  God  right  away  on  to  the 
end  of  time.  I  could  not  pray  for  your  grand- 
children  and    great-grandchildren    right    on   to 


58  UNION   WITH  GOD 

doomsday !  I  have  not  power  enough  nor 
scope  enough  to  carry  so  many  people  before 
God.  Yet  He  carried  them  all,  every  one. 
He  carried  you,  and  He  carried  me,  and 
petitioned  the  Father,  and  prayed  for  us,  and 
presented  us  before  the  throne  of  glory.  He 
prayed,  "  Sanctify  them  through  Thy  truth : 
Thy  word  is  truth." 

"  I  pray  not  that  Thou  shouldest  take  them 
out  of  the  world,  but  that  Thou  shouldest  keep 
them  from  the  evil."  Is  that  possible  to-day  ? 
Is  it  possible  for  us  to-day  to  be  in  the  world, 
and  to  be  perfectly  preserved  from  the  spirit  of 
it,  so  that  the  troubles  and  disturbances  of  out- 
side life  do  not  affect  our  sweet  communion 
with  God  }  Is  that  possible  ?  Is  it  possible 
for  you  to  be  truly  sanctified,  so  that  you  are 
saved  from  prejudice,  from  pride,  and  delivered 
from  passion  and  continual  enmity  with  God 
and  man?  Is  that  possible?  Jesus  prays  for 
that  very  thing.  That  is  the  kind  of  prayer 
which  He  gave  utterance  to ;  and  we  are  sure 
that  it  was  for  us.  When  we  believe  great 
things  of  our  calling,  Christ  is  with  us.  If 
the  prayer,  "  Sanctify  them  through  Thy  truth," 


UNION  WITH  A   PRAYING   SAVIOUR        59 

is  Uttered  to-day,  it  comes  a  great  deal  more 
from  Christ's  lips  than  it  does  from  any- 
body else's  ;  and  if  you  are  hungering  and 
thirsting  after  holiness,  it  does  not  require  much 
explanation  to  see  that  your  hunger  and  thirst 
is  secondary,  and  that  in  reality  the  hungry 
and  thirsty  Person  after  holiness  is  of  necessity 
our  Lord  and  Master,  Jesus  Christ,  because 
He  has  everybody's  hunger  in  His  heart,  while 
we  are  only  able  to  call  upon  God  for  our- 
selves and  for  one  or  two  others  whom  He  has 
given  us. 

We  have  then  these  great  prayers  of  Jesus 
and  are  under  His  intercession  to-day.  Now, 
of  course,  the  person  of  our  Lord  is  every- 
thing to  us — I  do  not  mean  in  theology  so  much 
as  in  practical  life ;  and  just  in  the  same 
way  as  His  life  is  the  great  life,  and  all  our 
little  lives  are  involved  in  it,  Christ  being  the 
macrocosm,  and  ourselves  the  microcosm,  so  our 
prayers  are  involved  in  His.  And  when  we 
see  that,  we  shall  see  also  that  the  great  stream 
of  prayer  which  comes  flowing  upon  the  Church 
and  is  the  life  and  union  of  the  Church,  that 
which    binds    us    together   in    one    and  brings 


6o  UNION  WITH  GOD 

blessings  down  upon  the  Church,  flowed  from 
our  Lord's  person.  And  when  we  see  the  great 
prayers  in  the  Bible  and  the  wonderful  prayers 
in  the  New  Testament,  they  came  from  Jesus, 
The  macrocosm  made  the  microcosm.  If  He 
had  not  prayed,  other  people  would  not  have 
done  so.  If  you  will  turn  to  the  Epistle  to  the 
Colossians  (iv.  12),  you  will  see  there  the  prayer 
of  Epaphras.  We  do  not  know  very  much 
about  brother  Epaphras,  except  that  he  was  a 
companion  and  friend  of  St.  Paul  ;  but  we 
know  this  about  him — that  he  was  a  man 
thoroughly  baptised  with  the  spirit  of  prayer. 
He  prays  for  the  Colossian  Church  that  they 
may  stand  "  perfect  and  complete  in  all  the 
will  of  God."  What  business  had  he  to  pray 
such  a  prayer  as  that  ?  Why  did  not  the 
religious  organs  of  the  day  take  him  down  for 
it,  and  say  he  ought  not  to  pray  such  big 
prayers  unless  he  put  in  the  condition  before- 
hand that  he  knew  they  would  not  be  answered  ? 
But  we  may  reply,  "  A  man  does  not  pray  great 
prayers  like  that  for  other  people  until  he  has 
experimentally  proved  that  such  prayers  can  be 
answered  for  himself."      His  agony  of  soul  for 


UNION  WITH  A    PR  A  YING  SA  VI OUR        6i 

Other  people  is  not  aroused  until  he  has  had 
something  of  the  agony  for  himself  first.  Was 
the  man  likely  to  pray  that  other  people  should 
stand  perfect  and  complete  in  all  the  will  of 
God  unless  he  had  the  witness  in  his  own  soul 
that  he  stood  there  ?  I  suppose  a  good  man, 
however  much  he  might  be  liable  to  mistake, 
would  not  be  tempted  to  such  a  piece  of  hypo- 
crisy as  to  pray  a  much  bigger  experience  for 
other  people  than  he  had  any  idea  of  enjoying 
or  experiencing  himself. 

Very  well,  then,  you  see  that  prayer  leans  on 
something.  It  leans,  first,  on  Epaphras's  own 
experience — he  had,  as  we  say,  "  the  blessing  "  ; 
and,  secondly,  he  prayed,  as  it  says  in  the 
Greek,  "  with  agony  " — with  intentness,  with 
striving.  He  prayed  for  the  Christians  who 
belonged  to  him  that  they  might  have  that 
blessing  too.  That  is  not  all.  His  experience, 
his  strong  crying  and  tears  for  them,  is  con- 
nected centrally  with  Gethsemane  and  with 
the  upper  room  in  Jerusalem.  All  the  praying 
that  God's  will  may  be  done  on  earth  has  its 
connection  with  the  garden  where  the  Man 
of  Sorrows   is   kneeling  upon  the  ground  and 


62  UNION  WITH  GOD 

saying,  *'  O  My  Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let  this 
cup  pass  from  Me ;  nevertheless,  not  as  I  will, 
but  as  Thou  wilt."  Do  you  suppose  we  could 
pray  that  way  if  Jesus  had  not  prayed  so  ? 
When  you  have  come  into  the  deep  place  in  life, 
when  every  one  has  been  against  you,  and  when 
familiar  friends  have  denied  you,  and  when 
your  circumstances  in  life  have  become  difficult 
and  you  have  not  known  which  way  to  turn, 
and  you  have  been  cast  on  God  with  strong 
crying  and  tears,  how  sweet  it  was  that  your 
tears  ran  into  the  flowing  stream  of  Christ's 
tears  of  compassion,  and  you  got  strength  from 
His  victory  to  claim  yours,  and  God  made  you 
to  stand  because  Jesus  stood  ! 

Turn  next  to  the  prayer  in  the  third  chapter 
of  Ephesians.  That  prayer  is  a  kind  of  Magna 
Charta  of  the  holiness  movement  :  "  For  this 
cause  I  bow  my  knees  unto  the  Father  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  of  whom  all  fatherhood 
in  heaven  and  earth  is  named "  (you  know 
the  prayer),  "that  He  would  grant  you, 
according  to  the  riches  of  His  glory,  to  be 
strengthened  with  might  by  His  Spirit  in  the 
inner  man ;    that    Christ    may  dwell    in    your 


UNION  WITH  A   PRAYING  SAVIOUR        63 


hearts  by  faith ;  that  ye,  being  rooted  and 
grounded  in  love,  may  be  able  to  grasp  with 
all  saints  what  is  the  breadth,  and  length,  and 
depth,  and  height  ;  and  to  know  the  love  of 
Christ,  which  passeth  knowledge,  that  ye  might 
be  filled  with  all  the  fulness  of  God."  Where 
did  St.  Paul  learn  to  pray  such  wonderful 
prayers  as  that  ?  He  learned,  as  he  says,  from 
the  Fatherhood.  He  bowed  his  knees  to  the 
Father,  I  tell  you  that  takes  us  back  to  certain 
words  in  the  Gospel  where  Jesus  kneeled  down 
and  said,  "Abba,  Father."  "All  things  are 
possible  unto  Thee."  These  words  are  the 
first  draft  of  Paul's  great  petitions  ;  they  are 
involved  in  them,  and  underlie  them. 

You  see,  beloved,  it  is  not  sentimental  holi- 
ness. Jesus  Christ's  preaching  of  holiness  was 
never  a  sentimental  holiness.  It  was  a  holiness 
which  showed  itself  to  man  in  sacrificial  deeds 
from  first  to  last,  and  in  a  continual  acceptance 
of  the  Cross  on  our  account ;  and  I  do  not 
believe  there  is  any  way  of  getting  into  the 
blessing  of  pure  life  and  communion  with  God 
unless  we  find  it  by  the  way  of  the  Holy  Cross, 
and  keep  it  by  the  way  that  we  find  it.     There 


64  UNION  WI2H  GOD 

is,  of  course,  such  a  thing  as  singing  ourselves 
into  ecstatic  conditions  ;  but  when  the  trial- 
time  came,  as  Jesus  went  down  into  the  "  deeps  " 
for  us,  it  is  true  that  they  sang  a  hymn,  but  it  is 
also  true  that  they  went  out  to  the  Mount  of 
Olives  and  to  the  Garden  of  Gethsemane.  That 
was  Christ's  holiness.  Don't  you  see  how 
different  that  is  from  the  idea  that  you  are 
simply  going  to  be  given  an  experience  which 
is  to  keep  you  happy  to  the  end  of  the  journey  ? 
Of  course  you  will  be  kept  happy  if  you  are 
kept  faithful  ;  but  to  be  kept  happy  does  not 
mean  that  you  are  going  to  be  severed  from 
Christ's  cross  or  from  the  conditions  of  sacri- 
fice which  make  the  redemption  of  the  world. 
Christ's  prayers  are  all  cruciform,  both  His 
prayers  for  Himself  and  His  intercessions  for 
His  people ;  and  if  we  are  going  the  right  way 
in  this  matter,  if  God  has  really  offered  to  us 
purity  and  offered  to  us  power,  we  may  be 
quite  sure  that  He  has  offered  it  to  us  by  the 
royal  way  of  the  Holy  Cross. 


IV 

UNION  WITH  THE   WILL    OF  GOD 


65 


IV 

UNION  WITH  THE    WILL   OF  GOD 

THE  Gospel  tells  us  that  upon  a  certain 
occasion,  when  our  Lord  was  sitting  and 
teaching  in  the  midst  of  a  group  of  charmed 
and  attentive  hearers,  the  circle  was  broken  in 
upon  by  some  one  (some  brawler  in  God's 
open-air  church),  and  the  discourse  interrupted 
(in  the  midst  of  who  knows  what  Divine 
allegory  or  oracle  ?)  by  the  information  that 
His  mother  and  His  brethren  were  standing 
without  (they  should  have  been  sitting  within) 
and  desiring  to  speak  with  Him  (they  should 
have  been  hearing  from  Him).  And  our  Lord 
looked  round  upon  the  circle  of  the  learners, 
and  drawing  the  attention  of  His  disturber  to 

their 

..."  beautiful  and  holy  faces, 
Lit  with  their  loving  and  aflame  with  God," 

He  said,  "Who  is  My  mother.-*  and  who  are 

67 


68  UNION   TVITH  GOD 

My  brethren  ?  .  .  .  Whosoever  shall  do  the 
will  of  My  Father  in  heaven,  the  same  is  My 
brother,  and  sister,  and  mother." 

You  will  find  the  passage  in  the  Gospels  at 
the  following  places  :  Matt.  xii.  46-50  ;  Mark 
iii.  31-35  ;  Luke  viii.  19-21.  Of  the  three 
accounts,  that  in  Mark  is  the  best  to  study, 
because  it  is  probably  the  most  primitive  form 
of  the  story,  and  because  it  presents  the  incident 
in  a  connection  which  is  probably  the  historical 
one,  and  certainly  must  have  been  intended  by 
the  writer,  according  to  which  sequence  the 
interruption  of  our  Lord's  discourse  takes  place 
shortly  after  a  somewhat  similar  occasion  when 
His  kinsmen  had  endeavoured  to  stop  Jesus  or 
imprison  or  detain  Him  on  the  ground  that 
His  reason  was  affected,  and  when  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees  had  taken  up  the  same  mis- 
understanding in  a  grosser  form  by  attributing 
His  power  to  the  indwelling  of  an  evil  spirit. 

It  is  well  to  bear  this  sequence  in  mind  when 
we  try  to  interpret  the  account ;  for  if  it  is  a 
historical  sequence  or  suggested  as  such  by  the 
writer,  it  furnishes  us  with  the  interpretation 
of  the  disturbance  of  our  Lord's  teaching  by 


UNION   WITH  THE    WILL    OF  GOD  69 

placing  it  in  line  with  other  movements  of  a 
distinctly  hostile  character.  The  message  sent 
to  our  Lord  by  His  mother  and  His  brethren 
was  no  casual  remark  of  bystanders,  but  it 
was  a  distinct  interference,  a  hostile  movement 
directed  against  His  mission.  There  were 
points  in  Christ's  life  when  He  shared  in  His 
own  person  the  experience  which  He  predicted 
for  His  followers,  that  a  man's  foes  should  be 
they  of  his  own  household.  Even  in  Nazareth 
and  in  Capernaum  the  Sword  came  as  well  as 
the  Peace,  and  inward  questionings  sometimes 
took  the  form  of  outward  hinderings  of  the 
Son  of  Man.  When  we  have  read  the  incident 
recorded  by  the  Evangelists,  the  first  thing  we 
have  to  do  is  to  replace  the  headline  in  our 
Bibles,  whatever  may  be  there  at  present,  by 
the  words — 

The  Holy  Family. 

I  had  at  first  almost  said  A  Holy  Family  ; 
but  this  would  have  been  a  mistake,  and  would 
have  been  clean  contrary  to  Christ's  teaching, 
which  was  that  there  could  be  only  one  Holy 
Family,  and  not  that  there  was  one  and  might 


70  UNION  WITH  GOD 

be  another.  "  Whosoever  shall  do  the  will," 
said  He,  "  the  same  is  the  brother,  the  sister, 
the  mother."  Let  us  then  take  the  words  just 
suggested  as  a  headline  to  the  story,  and  we 
will  spend  a  few  moments  in  thinking  over  the 
conventional  meaning  which  we  attach  to  the 
words  "  Holy  Family." 

The  words  express  to  us  to-day,  when  we 
hear  them  superficially,  much  the  same  thought 
as  would  have  been  suggested  to  the  circle  of 
listeners  by  the  words  "  His  mother"  and 
"  His  brethren."  They  are  the  terms  which 
we  employ,  for  example,  when  we  refer  to  the 
efforts  made  by  the  great  painters  of  past  days 
to  represent  in  visible  form  the  links  between 
our  Lord  and  the  humanity  which  He  had 
embraced.  When  we  say  "  The  Holy  Family," 
we  call  up  before  our  minds  one  great  picture 
after  another  which  bears  the  name :  perhaps 
it  is  a  picture  of  our  Lord  and  His  mother, 
with  St.  Elizabeth  and  St.  John  the  Baptist, 
or  it  is  St.  Joseph  and  the  Virgin,  with  our 
Lord  standing  between  them,  or  it  is  the  cave 
at  Bethlehem,  lighted  with  unearthly  splendour, 
where  the  human  forms  are  flanked  by  the  ox 


UNION  WITH  THE    WILL    OF  GOD  71 

that  knew  his  owner  and  the  ass  that  recognised 
his  master's  crib  ;   or  it  is  some  one  of  those 
many  forms  in  which  the  painters  represent  the 
Adoration  and  Love  which  must  have  marked 
the  earliest   days   of  the  Son   of  Man.      And 
often  along  with  the  loved  and  loving  human 
faces  the  painters  represent  to  us  the  adoration 
and  love  of  an  invisible  world  in  cherubic  faces 
and    galaxies    of  wings    and    eyes.     We   shall 
never  cease  to  love  the  great  masters  for  the 
way   in   which  they  spent  themselves   on   this 
subject,  and  there  are  some  of  their  treatments 
of   it  which    the   world    will    never    weary    of, 
because  child-life   and   mother-love  have  been 
so  glorified   in  them.     They  are  the  true  ex- 
pression of  that  sentiment  of  which   we   have 
the  falsity  and  counterfeit  in   the  language  of 
Herod  the  Great  :  "  When  ye  have  found  the 
Child,  bring  me  word,  that   I    may  come  and 
worship  Him  also."     No  one  brings  us  word  so 
clearly  as  the  great  masters  do.    When  they  are 
at  their  best,  their  work  is  distinctly  theology 
of  the  inspired  and  inspiring  kind.     A  friend 
of  mine  said,  after  seeing  the  great  Dresden 
Madonna,  "  I  don't  see  how  any  one  can  look 


72  UNION   WITH  GOD 

at  that  picture  and  be  a  Unitarian."  The 
picture  had  provoked  the  thought  on  the  artistic 
side  of  Hfe  which  the  whole  story  of  Christ  was 
meant  to  suggest  on  the  historical  side. 

But  now  let  us  turn  from  the  old  masters  to 
the  Master  Himself,  and  let  us  allow  Him  to 
paint  the  Holy  Family  for  us,  and  compare 
the  representation  which  He  offers  with  that 
to  which  we  are  accustomed.  We  find  from 
the  Gospel  that  His  idea  of  the  Holy  Family 
is  quite  different  from  the  conventional  one. 
He  takes  the  brush  and  paints  out  all  the 
familiar  faces  that  we  know  so  well.  The  out- 
ward relationships  vanish  away ;  mother  and 
brethren  and  sisters  disappear,  and  other  faces 
appear  instead  of  theirs,  listeners  and  learners, 
imitators  of  and  sufferers  with  Himself,  doers 
with  Him  of  the  Divine  will,  heirs  with  Him 
of  the  Divine  glory.  The  truth  "  Blessed  is 
she  that  bare  Thee"  is  overwritten  by  the 
larger  language  "  Blessed  are  they  that  hear 
the  word  of  God  and  do  it."  So  we  are 
brought  to  consider  what  Christ  paints  out, 
and  why,  and  who  are  they  that  are  painted  in, 
and  whence  came  they. 


UNION  WITH  THE    WILL    OF  GOD  73 


In  the  first  place,  we  may  say  that  the 
boundary  of  the  Holy  Family  (for  the  Family 
may  equally  be  described  as  a  Land,  and  has 
its  boundaries  as  a  Holy  Land  has)  is  the 
Divine  will — nothing  less  and  nothing  more. 
We  may,  if  we  please,  speak  of  this  boundary 
as  the  frame  that  holds  the  canvas  upon  which 
Jesus  is  painting  His  picture  for  us.  Inside 
its  limits  will  be  found  the  saints  on  earth  and 
the  saints  in  heaven.  "  Holy  living"  is  another 
term  for  living  in  the  will  of  God  :  those  who 
are  in  the  will  of  God  are  holy  ;  those  who 
are  out  of  the  will  of  God  are  unholy.  The 
definition  is  sharp,  as  Christ's  definitions  usually 
are,  and  there  does  not  seem  to  be  a  middle 
or  third  term.  It  is  this  will  of  God  by  which 
we  are  sanctified.  Sanctity,  or  its  equivalent 
Beatitude,  is  that  condition  in  which  the  lives 
of  believers  have  become,  in  their  own  proper 
measure  and  degree,  the  incarnation  of  the 
will  of  God  on  earth.  The  prepared  body  of 
Christ  was  explained  by  the  writer  of  the 
Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  as  being  the  equivalent 
outwardly  for  what  was  inwardly  denoted  by 
the  words  "  I   come  to  do  Thy  will,  O  God  "  ; 


74  UNION  WITH  GOD 

and  we  should  err  gravely,  and  be  numbered 
amongst  those  who  do  not  know  the  Scriptures 
nor  the  power  of  God,  if  we  were  to  suppose 
that  the  perfect  conformity  between  Christ's 
inward  law  and  His  outward  life  was  meant  to 
be  an  argument  to  discourage  us  from  our 
calling  to  conformity  with  God's  thought  for 
us,  or  that  His  prepared  body  was  to  be 
reckoned  a  reason  against  our  presenting  such 
bodies  and  spirits  as  we  have  to  be  living 
sacrifices  in  a  reasonable  service.  On  the 
contrary,  we  may  derive  great  encouragement 
from  the  fact  that  His  obedience  was  accom- 
plished in  a  body  that  claims  fraternity  with 
ours,  and  we  must  believe  that  the  doing  of 
the  will  of  God  is  possible  for  those  who  follow 
the  blameless  Lamb  of  God,  even  though  they 
are  not  themselves  blameless  lambs  to  begin 
with. 

In  the  next  place,  we  can  see  that  the  reason 
for  the  appearance  of  any  given  figure,  at  any 
given  time,  amongst  the  saints  in  either  world 
is  that  the  person  in  question  has  got  into 
touch  with  God  and  with  the  will  of  God  ;  and 
the  reason  for  the  disappearance  of  any  given 


UNION  WITH  THE    WILL    OF  GOD  75 

figure  from  the  charmed  circle  of  illuminated 
lives  is  that  he  has  ceased  to  be  in  harmony 
with  God.  It  is  a  changing  picture,  where  the 
grouping  of  the  mothers  and  sisters  and  brothers 
is  constantly  altering,  where  some  press  nearer 
to  the  central  radiance  and  some  elongate  from 
it  and  disappear,  where  some  are  lost  in  God, 
absorbed  into  the  central  abyss  of  love,  and 
some  are  lost  out  of  God,  withdrawing  them- 
selves from  the  light  into  the  darkness.  No 
doubt  this  may  sound  strange,  and  it  may  be 
said  that  what  we  are  describing  is  not  a 
picture,  but  a  kaleidoscope,  and  that  the  blessed 
words  "  mother,"  "sister,"  and  "  brother"  ought 
not  to  be  regarded  as  thus  ephemeral  in  cha- 
racter. Let  us,  then,  examine  the  picture  which 
Christ  presents  to  us,  and  study  some  of  the 
individual  cases  In  it,  in  order  that  we  may  see 
whether  our  interpretation  is  a  correct  one. 

Of  the  central  figure,  at  all  events,  there  is 
no  doubt :  the  Christ  is  "  the  same  yesterday, 
to-day,  and  for  ever,"  Necessarily  in  any 
picture  He  must  be  the  central  object,  whether 
it  be  a  grouping  of  two  or  of  three,  as  in  the 
leading  situations  in  the  Gospels,  or  whether  it 


76  UNION  WITH  GOD 

be  the  multitude  that  no  man  can  number  in 
the  summing  up  of  the  saints.  If  two  appear 
with  Him  in  transfiguration  glory,  He,  naturally- 
enough,  must  be  delineated  between  them  ;  and 
if  three  are  crucified  on  crosses  of  shame,  we 
take  it  for  granted  that  Jesus  is  in  the  midst — 
even  the  crucifiers  had  that  much  sense  of  sym- 
metry ;  if  He  walk  on  the  day  of  His  rising 
with  two  that  are  in  deep  distress  and  dis- 
appointment, could  we  paint  the  scene  of  the 
Divine  converse  without  making  the  disciples 
group  themselves  instinctively  one  on  each 
side  of  the  mysterious  Stranger  ?  And  so  with 
every  situation  in  His  life  :  the  triumphal  entry 
into  Jerusalem  divides  its  procession  into  "  those 
that  went  before "  and  "  those  that  followed 
after"  Jesus;  and  the  triumphal  entry  into 
paradise  knows  no  other  central  figure  nor 
any  other  focus  for  the  motions  of  the  blessed 
than  the  throne  of  the  Lamb. 

And  certainly  the  centre  of  the  Holy  Family 
is  and  must  be  the  Lord  Christ.  It  is  worth 
noticing  that  in  His  representation  of  the 
blessed  company  that  do  the  will  of  the  Father 
He   always    placed    Himself.       "  I    do   always 


UNION  WITH  THE    WILL    OF  GOD  ■j'j 

what  pleases  Him  " ;  "  The  Father  hears  Me 
always  "  ;  "I  am  the  Son  that  does  nothing 
of  Himself"  ;  "God  worketh,  and  I  work  too." 
Such  sayings  as  these  are  a  summary  of  the 
perfect  obedience  and  communion  in  which  He 
lived. 

But  when  we  turn  to  the  other  members  of 
the  Holy  Family  we  find  a  great  difference. 
Begin  with  the  blessed  mother,  of  whom  we 
think  as  highest  in  privilege  above  all  her  race. 
Set  her  as  high  as  we  may,  consistently  with 
being  a  little  lower  than  the  angels,  we  cannot 
help  seeing  that  her  will  was  not  always  the 
will  of  her  Son,  and  therefore  not  one  with  the 
will  of  God. 

Sometimes  He  went  too  slow  for  her  judg- 
ment, as  when  at  Cana  of  Galilee  He  was 
urged  to  hasten  His  miracle,  and  compelled  to 
say  words  out  of  which  no  criticism  can  remove 
the  rebuke  which  they  obviously  contain :  "What 
have  I  to  do  with  thee  ?  "  or  "  What  have  we 
in  common  }''  It  is  the  language  of  alienation, 
the  same  which  the  demons  use  with  regard  to 
Himself.  "  Mine  hour  is  not  yet  come."  It 
is   a  formula  of   independence  as   regards   the 


78  UNION  WITH  GOD 

creature,  used  by  One  who  lived  in  God  towards 
those  who  acted  apart  from  God.  He  used  it 
again  when  His  brethren  urged  Him  to  prema- 
ture assertion  of  His  dignity  and  claims. 

Sometimes,  again,  the  Lord  went  too  fast 
for  the  approval  of  His  mother  and  brethren, 
as  in  the  case  which  we  are  studying.  Sug- 
gestions were  made  of  His  insanity,  and  plans 
were  laid  to  reclaim  Him  to  that  slower  conduct 
which  never  attracts  the  extremer  forms  of  re- 
proach. But  if  the  mother  of  Jesus  was  thus 
disposed  to  alternately  spur  and  restrain  her 
Son,  what  is  this  but  saying  that  there  were 
times  when  she  was  not  a  member  of  the  Holy 
Family  at  all,  and  therefore  needed  the  same 
teaching  and  training  as  the  rest  of  the  com- 
pany, if  the  words  of  eternal  blessing  were 
to  be  spoken  over  her,  "  The  same  is  My 
mother  "  ? 

Or  take  the  case  of  the  most  privileged  of 
the  disciples,  beginning  with  those  who  were 
relations  as  well  as  followers.  We  have  already 
seen  that  His  brethren  did  not  believe  in  Him. 
The  earliest  versions  of  the  Gospel  add  a  qualify- 
ing word  to  that  severe  indictment ;  they  tell  us 


UNION  WITH  THE   WILL    OF  GOD  79 

that  "  His  brethren  did  not  at  that  time  believe 
in  Him."  But  even  if  the  qualification  be  a 
just  one,  as  we  can  readily  allow,  the  necessity 
for  such  a  qualification  is  a  sufficient  reason  for 
Christ's  language  with  regard  to  His  brethren 
after  the  flesh  ;  it  means  that  "  the  Lord  did 
not  at  that  time  regard  His  brethren  as  members 
of  the  Holy  Family." 

And  if  we  pass  to  the  study  of  the  experience 
of  those  who  were  closely  connected  with  the 
most  solemn  occasions  of  our  Lord's  life,  we 
must  say  similar  things.  John  the  Beloved 
was  sometimes  in  the  Holy  Family  and  some- 
times not  :  he  was  in  it  when  he  leaned  on 
Jesus'  breast,  and  as  St.  Bernard  says,  "  im- 
bibed from  the  Only  Begotten  what  He  had 
imbibed  from  the  Father  "  ;  he  was  not  in  the 
sacred  oneness  when  he  stretched  out  his  hands 
to  heaven  to  borrow  a  thunderbolt  and  destroy 
a  village  of  inhospitable  Samaritans. 

Peter,  too,  is  a  strangely  fluctuating  face  in 
the  first  days  of  the  Gospel-preaching.  Great 
confessions  and  great  denials  follow  one  another 
so  closely  as  hardly  to  leave  space  between 
them  for  Christ  to  praise  the  confession  or  to 


8o  UNION  WITH  GOD. 

war  against  the  deviation.  "  Thou  art  Christ. 
.  .  .  But  Thou  shalt  not  suffer."  "  I  will  go 
with  Thee  to  prison  and  to  death.  .  .  .  But 
...   I  do  not  know  the  man." 

Now  we  may  be  sure  that  these  fluctuations 
could  not  be  meant  for  the  settled  experience 
of  the  dear  mother  and  brethren  and  disciples. 
The  Lord  could  not  have  intended  that  a  tidal 
wave  of  joy  or  illumination  should  toss  His 
disciples  to  His  breast,  to  be  followed  more  or 
less  rapidly  by  an  undertow  which  should  carry 
them  back  again  into  conditions  which  they  had 
coveted  to  leave.  There  must  be  some  way  of 
being  kept  in  the  love  of  God,  if  there  is  any 
way  of  finding  the  love  of  God  for  ourselves. 
But  the  art  of  keeping  what  we  find  is  an  art 
which  is  only  learned  in  an  upper  chamber  on 
the  day  of  Pentecost.  Nor  is  there  anything 
short  of  a  direct  occupation  of  our  souls  by  the 
promised  Spirit  of  God  that  will  enable  us  to 
be  "  always  what  we  sometimes  are,  and  never 
what  we  sometimes  have  been." 


V 

CREED  AND   CHARACTER 


8i 


V 

CREED  AND   CHARACTER 

THERE  is  an  extant  piece  of  early  Christian 
literature  commonly  cited  as  the  Second 
Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians,  but  which 
would  be  more  accurately  described  as  a  homily 
read  by  some  unknown  person  in  the  Church  at 
Corinth,  from  which  I  wish  to  quote  the  opening 
sentences,  after  which  I  will  construct  a  lesser 
homily  upon  the  one  from  which  the  excerpt  is 
made.  The  document  is  an  interesting  one, 
not  merely  from  an  antiquarian  point  of  view, 
as  being  perhaps  the  earliest  known  sermon  in 
the  history  of  Christendom  outside  of  the  pages 
of  the  New  Testament,  and  because  it  has  the 
advantage  of  being  complete  in  itself,  whereas 
the  records  of  apostolic  discourses  are  for  the 
most  part  mere  fragmentary  notes  ;  but  also 
because    there    are   suggestions   in    it   of    the 

elevation   of  thought  and  of  morals  which  we 

83 


84  UNION  WITH  GOD 

associate  with  the  apostolic  age.  Whoever  the 
writer  may  have  been,  he  was  a  manly  soul  to 
whom  the  Isthmian  games,  which  were  close 
at  hand  when  he  was  preaching,  suggested 
the  same  wrestlings  and  runnings  for  spiritual 
crowns  as  had  been  spoken  of  by  an  apostolic 
athlete  who  had  preceded  him. 

The  opening  words  of  this  interesting  docu- 
ment are  as  follows :  "  Brethren,  we  ought  to 
think  of  Jesus  Christ  as  God,  as  the  judge  of 
quick  and  dead.  And  we  ought  not  to  think 
meanly  of  our  salvation  :  for  when  we  think 
meanly  of  Him,  meanly  do  we  also  expect  to 
receive."  It  is  clear  that  for  the  man  who 
uttered  these  words  there  was  a  necessary  con- 
nection between  creed  and  character,  between 
what  we  confess  and  what  we  experience, 
between  low  views  of  Christ  and  meagre 
receptions  of  the  grace  of  Christ ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  lofty  views  of  the  person  and 
work  of  Christ  are  closely  related  to  the  fulness 
of  the  blessing  of  the  everlasting  Gospel.  It 
was  not  of  the  creed  as  a  bul-wark  against  heresy 
that  he  was  speaking,  but  of  the  creed  as  a 
stepping-stone  to  experimental  holiness. 


CREED  AND  CHARACTER  85 

You  will  find  the  same  conjunction  of  ideas 
in  another  very  helpful  little  book  of  the  Spirit, 
the  Dream  of  Gerontius,  by  John  Henry 
Newman — the  little  book  which  Gordon  took 
with  him  to  Khartoum  to  die  on.  When 
Gerontius  is  on  his  death-bed,  he  makes  his 
confession  as  follows  : — 

"  Firmly  I  believe  and  truly 

God  is  three  and  God  is  one  : 
Next  I  do  acknowledge  duly 

Manhood  taken  by  the  Son  : 
And  I  firmly  trust  and  fully 

In  that  manhood  crucified  : 
Every  deed  and  thought  unruly 

Do  to  death  ;  for  He  has  died. 
Sanctus  fortis,  sanctus  Deus, 

De  profundis  oro  te,"  etc. 

And  you  will  notice  the  very  same  flight  of  the 
soul  from  its  creed  about  God  to  its  conformity 
with  God  as  we  detected  in  the  early  Christian 
homillst.  Now  it  is  quite  possible  that  it  may 
be  a  new  thought  to  some  that  orthodoxy  and 
sanctity  have  the  ultimate  connection  which  we 
have  suggested  ;  certainly  the  common  opinion 
would  seem  to  be  that,  so  far  from  there  being 
any  link  between  them,  anybody  can  be  orthodox 


86  UNION  WITH  GOD 

and  no  one  can  be  holy.  But  that  opinion 
simply  arises  from  wrong  views  with  regard  to 
the  faith  of  the  believer  and  the  Divine  nature 
of  which  he  becomes  partaker.  We  are  not 
speaking  of  mere  lip  confessions,  nor  of  Utopian 
attainments  :  we  are  talking  of  God  and  the 
children  of  God. 

It  is  not  easy  to  have  right  views  of  God  and 
clear  vision  of  Christ.  Even  on  the  intellectual 
plane  it  does  not  become  easier  as  time  goes 
by  to  say  that  we  believe  in  the  Son  of  God  : 
on  the  contrary,  there  are  abundant  signs  that 
the  cyclical  movement  which  Church  history  so 
often  suggests  is  bringing  us  back  again  not 
only  to  the  primitive  life  of  the  Church,  but  also 
to  the  primitive  questions  of  the  Church,  and 
we  may  very  likely  end  with  a  last  heresy 
similar  to  the  first  as  regards  the  person  of  the 
Lord  Himself.  But  if  it  is  not  easy  to  have 
satisfactory  intellectual  apprehensions  of  Christ, 
neither  is  it  easy  to  possess  that  spiritual  appre- 
hension which  handles  and  tastes  and  feels  the 
Word  of  Life.  Apart  from  the  help  and  illu- 
mination of  God  Himself,  the  Christian  creed 
is  an  alpine  range  of  impossible  beliefs. 


CREED  AND   CHARACTER  Zl 

But  if  belief  is  alpine,  what  are  we  to  say  of 
conduct  and  of  character — I  mean  of  conduct 
as  explained  by  Christ  and  character  as  required 
by  Christ  ?  Is  it  easy  to  be  blameless  and 
harmless,  the  sons  of  God  without  rebuke,  in 
the  midst  of  a  crooked  and  perverse  generation  ? 
It  is  Christ  of  whom  we  are  told  that  He  was 
holy,  harmless,  and  separate  from  sinners  ;  and 
His  level  must  at  least  be  as  high  as  our 
mountain.  And  even  those  who  venture  to 
disbelieve  in  the  elevation  of  Christ's  character 
do  not  make  it  easier  for  us  to  be  what 
we  ought  to  be  by  the  unbelief  which  they 
suggest.  They  cannot  make  us  more  by  making 
Him  less.  The  Christian  aspires  to  be  holy 
because  his  Lord  and  God  is  holy  ;  he  is 
hardly  likely  to  aspire  more  if  he  should  believe 
less. 

And  what  is  true  of  virtue  and  of  sanctity  in 
general,  as  we  regard  them  mirrored  in  Christ 
and  hear  them  enforced  by  Him,  is  true  of  all 
the  separate  headings  under  which  the  Christian 
character  can  be  subdivided  ;  so  that  whether 
we  consider  the  command  to  truth,  justice,  and 
love,  to  patience  under  the  hand  of  God  or  at 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


the  hands  of  men,  to  the  forgiveness  of  injuries, 
and  the  benediction  of  those  that  curse  us,  we 
are  obliged  to  regard  the  Christian  life  as  an 
elevated  range  of  inaccessible  conduct. 

And  the  strange  and  wonderful  thing  is  that 
all  the  spiritual  men  seem  to  discover  that  these 
beliefs  which  make  the  Creed,  and  these 
practices  which  make  the  Life,  however  im- 
possible and  inaccessible  they  may  be  separately, 
are  possible  and  accessible  when  taken  together, 
and  that  thus  taken  they  blend  into  a  shining 
tableland  of  faith  and  life, — 

"  To  which  our  God  Himself  is  moon  and  sun." 

And  it  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  truth  of 
this  is  not  deduced  from  a  quotation  from 
an  anonymous  father  of  the  second  century, 
or  the  imaginary  dying  Christian  depicted  by 
a  father  of  the  nineteenth  century,  for  it  is 
merely  a  roundabout  way  of  saying  what  St. 
John  says  in  a  sentence  :  "  Who  is  he  that 
overcometh  the  world,  but  he  that  believeth 
that  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God  ? "  or  what  St. 
Paul  proclaims  equally  forcibly  from  his  own 
experience  :  "  I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ, 


CREED  AND   CHARACTER  89 

and  I  live  no  longer  :  the  world  is  crucified  to 
me,  and  I  to  the  world." 

So  it  comes  to  this,  that  we  must  say  "  God" 
and  "  Holiness"  as  nearly  as  possible  in  succes- 
sive breaths  ;  so  that  God  may  make  holiness 
possible,  and  holiness  make  God  real.  We 
must  say  "A  Divine  Saviour,"  and  then  "A 
Divine  salvation,"  thinking  meanly  neither  of 
the  one  nor  of  the  other.  And  we  must 
sedulously  exclude  from  our  hearts  and  lives 
everything  that  would  involve  unworthy 
thoughts  of  Him.  We  must  covet  that  the 
thoughts  of  our  hearts  may  be  cleansed  by  the 
inspiration  of  His  holy  word,  in  order  that  we 
may  worthily  magnify  His  holy  name.  The 
prospect  of  a  life  continued  without  the  heart 
being  cleansed  is  unworthy  of  the  Name.  "  I 
should  die,  O  my  God,"  said  St.  Catharine  of 
Genoa,  in  one  of  her  moments  of  religious 
ecstasy,  "  if  I  thought  that  I  should  fail  of  loving 
Thee  with  all  my  heart." 

We  may  be  sure  that  nothing  will  be  so 
likely  to  make  us  miss  the  mark  of  the  Divine 
glory  as  the  habitual  exercise  of  unworthy 
thoughts  with  regard  to  the  Christian  calling  in 


90  UNION  WITH  GOD 

general,  or  our  personal  vocation  in  particular. 
Faber  says  that  it  is  as  easy  for  the  devil  to 
contend  against  God  with  low  views  as  with 
mortal  sins.  I  think  this  is  probably  true,  and 
that  if  it  is  true  low  views  must  be  classed  with 
the  temptations  that  make  for  mortal  sins.  In 
the  armoury  of  the  devil  they  are  ranged  along- 
side of  the  most  biting  and  burning  of  his  fiery 
darts.  At  the  same  time  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  analysis  and  detection  of  low  views, 
either  in  the  individual  or  in  the  Church,  is  not 
so  easy  as  the  crusade  against  deadly  sins. 
Minimum  Christianity  has  a  kind  of  orthodoxy 
of  its  own  :  it  is  considered  respectful  to  Christ 
and  His  Apostles  that  the  Church  should  have 
receded  from  what  they  proclaimed  and  lived  ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  along  with  the  com- 
placence over  a  Church  which  has  ethically  and 
spiritually  gone  down,  there  is  a  disapprobation 
shown  towards  individuals  who  may  be  con- 
sidered too  keen  in  their  purpose  to  reascend  : 
so  that  it  comes  to  pass  that  a  crusade  against 
mean  views  of  Christ  and  of  His  great  salvation 
would  hardly  be  recognised  as  a  crusade  at  all. 
We  may,  however,  be  sure  that  if  the  enemy 


CREED  AND   CHARACTER  91 

fights  against  God  successfully  with  low  views, 
the  most  successful  way  to  resist  him  is  to 
disarm  him.  Now  those  views  of  God  and  of 
His  work  in  man  are  low  views  which  in  any 
degree  suggest  that  we  have  a  smaller  God  to 
deal  with  than  the  early  Church  had.  It  is  a 
necessary  part  of  our  idea  of  God  that  He  is 
not  capable  of  being,  according  to  human  ideas, 
more  and  less.  "  Thou  art  the  same,  and  Thy 
years  have  no  end "  is  philosophy  as  well  as 
religion ;  it  is  the  same  thought  that  underlies 
the  words,  "  Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yesterday, 
to-day,  and  for  ever."  But  if  it  were  not  an 
intellectual  necessity  for  us  to  think  of  God  as 
changeless  and  timeless,  we  should  not  hesitate 
to  say  that  for  the  true  Christian,  if  the  question 
were  asked  as  to  whether  God  could  be  less  or 
more,  the  answer  gathered  up  from  every  day 
of  communion  and  confirmed  by  every  moment 
of  illumination  would  be  that  God  was  more 
and  more  continually.  So  that  it  is  easy  to 
understand  how  St.  Paul  sometimes  falls  into 
expressions  which  suggest  growth  in  God,  and 
talks  of  "  increasing  with  the  increase  of  God," 
because   the   revelation  of  God  and  the  com- 


92  UNION  WITH  GOD 

munion  with  God  and  the  fellow-working  with 
God  were  developing  at  such  a  rate,  both  in 
his  own  experience  and  in  the  experience  of 
those  whom  he  taught  to  imitate  him  and 
Christ  in  him. 

One  of  my  early  book  memories  is  an  illus- 
trated copy  of  ^sops  Fables,  and  amongst 
them  one  fable  in  particular  suggests  itself  to 
me  in  this  connection  :  a  story  of  an  old  woman 
leaning  over  a  huge  wine  jar  which  once  con- 
tained excellent  Falernian,  and  inhaling  the 
fragrance  of  the  vintage  with  which  the  vessel 
was  once  filled.  I  quite  forget  the  moral  of 
the  story,  and  the  illustration  cannot  be  re- 
produced in  the  present  pages,  however  much 
one  might  wish  to  set  before  the  reader  the 
aged  form  and  the  empty  amphora.  For  us  of 
course  the  moral  is  that  no  such  figure  and  no 
such  vessel  can  represent  the  Christian  Church. 
Of  course  we  would  admit  cheerfully  and  gladly 
that  the  maxim  about  the  permanence  of  sweet 
odour  in  a  vessel  that  has  once  been  filled 
("  Quo  semel  imbuta  est,"  etc.)  is  true  of  the 
Christian  Church  :  we  do  not  think  it  easy  for 
any  Church   to  be  so  dead  that  a  devout  or 


CREED  AND   CHARACTER  93 

hungry  soul  cannot  find  in  it  some  savour  of 
God  in  Christ.  But  we  think  the  scent-bottle 
theory  of  the  Church  is  not  a  good  one.  One 
needs  to  paint  another  figure  by  the  side,  with 
the  flush  of  heavenly  youth,  and  a  cup  that 
runs  over.  Underneath  the  pair  of  pictures  we 
may  write  the  old-fashioned  words,  "  Ecclesia 
stans  aut  cadens  "  :  on  the  one  side  we  illustrate 
the  day  of  Pentecost  fully  come,  and  on  the 
other  the  day  of  Pentecost  fully — gone  ! 

Further,  we  must  remember  that  those  are 
low  views  of  Christian  life  which  assume  that 
a  less  complete  surrender  to  the  Lord  will  be 
adequate  to  our  full  salvation  in  the  present 
day  than  was  necessary  in  the  days  when  loyal 
and  loving  people  left  all  that  they  might 
follow  Christ.  Confessors  are  made  out  of 
people  who  have  something  to  tell,  and  martyrs 
out  of  people  who  have  some  one  to  love.  We 
cannot  charge  the  early  Christian  teachers  with 
concealing  the  secret  of  their  success,  and 
letting  the  knowledge  of  their  elixir  die  with 
them.  "  For  whom  I  have  suffered  the  loss 
of  all  things";  "Where  Thou  goest  I  will 
go  "  ;  "  These  are  they  which  follow  the  Lamb 


94  UNION  WITH  GOD 

whithersoever  He  goeth."  But  no  tradition, 
not  even  from  the  best  and  loftiest  lives,  is 
sufficient  to  secure  for  us  the  point  of  contact 
with  the  Eternal  Life.  Low  views  must  be 
chased  out  of  the  personal  life,  as  well  as 
banished  from  our  thoughts  of  the  Church. 
When  this  is  done  we  shall  make  progress. 
It  will  be  a  birthday  of  new  spiritual  science. 

How  often  in  the  matter  of  our  earthly- 
knowledge  everything  leads  up  to  some  definite 
grasp  of  a  new  truth,  upon  the  single  appre- 
hension of  which  all  future  thinking  turns ! 
Sir  William  Rowan  Hamilton  tells  us  that  the 
birthday  of  the  science  of  quaternions  was  on 
a  certain  occasion  when,  as  he  was  walking 
with  Lady  Hamilton  towards  Dublin,  "  the 
galvanic  circle  of  thought  began  to  close,  and 
the  sparks  which  dropped  from  the  circuit  were 
the  fundamental  /,/,  and  k''  of  the  new  science. 
Does  any  one  ask  what  would  happen  if  the 
galvanic  circle  of  obedience  were  to  close  in 
any  life?  We  cannot  tell  in  particular  what 
sparks  would  fall  from  the  completed  circle  of 
communion  ;  but  we  have  it  summed  up  for  us 
in  general  in  the  formula  of  Acts  v.  32  :  "  He 


CREED  AND   CHARACTER  95 


hath  given  the  Holy  Ghost  to  them  that  obey 
Him." 

And,  last  of  all,  those  are  low  views  of  the 
Gospel  which  assume  it  to  be  less  catholic  in 
regard  to  the  individual  than  in  the  world  at 
large.  We  all  of  us  believe  in  foreign  missions 
nowadays ;  but  to  believe  in  claiming  the  world 
for  Jesus  has  been  a  progressive  education  in 
the  Church  from  the  beginning.  It  has  been 
carried  out  by  contention  often,  and  by  entreaty 
ever.  Peter  only  grasped  it  slowly,  James 
perhaps  never ;  Antioch  divided  over  it,  and 
Paul  that  went  to  the  work  went  under  what 
was  often  very  like  anathema.  But  it  is  easy 
to-day  to  say  that  the  earth  is  the  Lord's; 
and  we  hardly  consider  any  one  a  good  Christian 
who  has  not  some  share  in  missionary  enterprise, 
some  touch  of  missionary  fervour. 

Is  it  less  important  to  proclaim  the  empire 
of  Christ  over  the  passions  than  over  the 
savages  of  far-away  islands,  a  less  necessary 
Gospel  to  set  Him  over  all  thoughts  that  rise 
up  against  obedience  to  Him  within  the  secret 
mind  than  to  carry  His  truth  and  set  it  above 
idolatrous  worships  and  imperfect  apprehensions 


96  UNION  WITH  GOD 

of  God  ?  Must  it  not  be,  as  Newman  said, 
that  the  visitation  of  God's  Spirit  is  **  as  catholic 
in  the  individual  as  it  is  in  the  Church  at  large, 
and  that  it  claims  the  whole  man  for  God  "  ; 
and  that  any  spirit  which  makes  reserves  from 
this  great  obedience,  the  circuit  of  which  God 
is  closing  in  the  thought,  will,  and  affections  of 
every  true  believer,  is  not  of  God  ? 


VI 

THE  SABBATISM  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD 


97 


"  There  7'smaincth  therefore  a  rest  to  the  people  of  GodT — IIeb.  iv.  9. 


98 


VI 

THE  SABBATISM  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD 

WHEN  the  proposal  was  made  for  carry- 
ing a  railway  through  some  of  the 
most  beautiful  scenery  of  the  Derbyshire  dales, 
an  indignant  letter  was  written  by  Mr.  Ruskin 
to  the  public  papers  to  stay,  if  it  were  possible, 
the  devastation  that  seemed  to  be  impending 
over  a  country  which  he  loved  not  merely  for 
its  own  sake,  or  for  his  own  sake,  but  for 
the  sake  of  the  people  themselves,  to  whom 
its  exquisite  configuration  was  of  the  very 
nature  of  an  evangel,  and  therefore  entitled 
to  the  tradition  of  an  unblemished  text  from 
generation  to  generation.  Amongst  other  argu- 
ments which  he  urged  against  what,  I  suppose, 
may  be  called  the  secularisation  of  the  Dale 
scenery,  he  said  that  Derbyshire  is  "a  lovely 
child's  alphabet,  an  alluring  first  lesson  in  all 
that's  admirable."     And  without  discussing  the 

99 


loo  UNION  WITH  GOD 

question  of  the  justification  of  railroads  in 
beautiful  localities,  or  the  value  of  Mr.  Ruskin 's 
defence  of  such  localities  against  the  spoiler, 
we  may  recognise,  in  the  sentence  quoted  on 
the  educational  value  of  small  strips  of  country, 
a  truth  which  has  been  closely  wrought  into 
the  religious  history  of  the  race.  For  it  has 
pleased  God  to  make  one  small  land  of  such 
importance  in  the  spiritual  progress  of  the 
people,  that  not  only  have  the  ordinary  pro- 
cesses of  His  providence  been  seen  in  its  story,- 
not  only  has  it  been  the  stage  for  the  fulfilment 
of  promised  mercies,  and  for  the  working  out 
of  threatened  judgments,  but  the  highest 
aspirations  of  the  soul  in  quest  of  union  with 
God  have  been  expressed  in  the  language  of  this 
country,  of  its  rivers  and  plains,  of  its  corn  and 
wine  and  oil,  of  its  wars  and  rests  ;  so  that  we 
may  fairly  say,  in  Ruskin's  terms,  that  Palestine 
is  a  lovely  child's  alphabet,  an  alluring  first  lesson 
in  all  that's  admirable  ;  and  when  we  say  this  we 
mean  chiefly  to  draw  attention  to  the  thought 
expressed  by  the  writer  to  the  Hebrews,  that 
out  of  this  alphabet  was  spelt  the  truth  that 
"there  remaineth  a  rest  to  the  people  of  God." 


THE  SABBATISM  01'  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD     loi 

And  I  suppose  there  is  no  historical  student, 
and    certainly    no    student    of    Scripture,    who 
would  dispute  or  deny  the   educational   value 
of  the  land  of  which  we    speak.      Nine-tenths 
of  the  good  words   we  repeat  are  in  Eastern 
language,  if  we  only  knew  it  :  they  can  never 
be    more    than    half   translated,   however   pro- 
gressive we  may  be.     We  shall  always  talk  of 
Promised  Lands,  whenever  God  breathes  into 
our  souls  the  hope  of  good  things  to  come  ;  of 
Beulah  or  wedlock  lands  when  we  describe  the 
life  of  abiding  communion  with  God  ;  of  New 
Jerusalem,  rather  than  of  Atlantis  or  Utopia, 
when  we   see   visions    and    dream    dreams   of 
renewed  and  revised  social  order :  it  is  signifi- 
cant that  the  most    enthusiastic   persons  who 
took    part     in    the     Chicago     Parliament     of 
Religions  have  described  the  scene  as   being 
the  Mount  Tabor  of  their  personal  experience. 
There  was  no  American  mountain  adequate  to 
express   the   emotion !       From    the    historical 
standpoint  at  all  events  this  little  land  vindicates 
its  right  to  be  called  a  religious  alphabet,  and 
the  smaller  the  land  the  more  wonderful  is  it 
that  so  many  lessons  have  been  taught  in  terms 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


of  it.  Compared  with  Egypt  or  Assyria,  this 
land  is  only  a  strip  for  which  they  both  con- 
tended ;  yet  it  is  from  its  natural  features,  and 
not  from  theirs,  that  God  taught  His  children 
their  elementary  lessons,  and  is  teaching  them 
to-day  some  of  their  more  advanced  lessons. 
Compared  with  its  neighbour  Phoenicia,  from 
which  Western  peoples  received  their  secular 
alphabet,  we  may  say  of  this  land  and  its 
message  to  the  rest  of  the  world  that  it  has 
for  its  Cadmus  Him  that  was  from  the  be- 
ginning. For  the  Spirit  of  Truth  not  only 
made  a  message  out  of  Christ's  life,  but  also 
out  of  His  environment,  and  made  the  land  a 
talking  and  a  teaching  land  for  all  those  who 
have  ears  to  hear.     And  so 

"  Faith  hath  yet  its  Ohvet, 
And  love  its  Gahlee." 

It  was  natural  enough  that  this  should  have 
been  so  when  Christ  was  on  earth  ;  for  in 
those  days  all  creatures  found  a  speech,  and 
the  very  birds  and  beasts  and  trees  and  flowers 
were  full  of  oracles  :  the  birds  might  say,  We 
are  created   to   be   preached   about ;   and   the 


THE  SABBATISM  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD    103 

lilies,  We  are  here  to  be  considered  ;  and  the 
lambs,  When  in  fold  we  are  the  figure  of  His 
Church,  and  when  lost,  we  are  the  favourite 
text  for  His  compassions  to  discourse  on  ;  and 
as  for  the  trees,  the  fig  tree  when  barren 
proclaimed  His  judgments,  when  slow  of  fruit, 
His  forbearance,  and  in  the  richness  of  summer 
promise.  His  advent.  For  everything  that 
was  about  Christ  was  vocal  of  Christ.  But 
it  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
message  of  the  land  was  over  when  Christ 
ascended.  For  as  time  went  by  a  new  lesson 
was  framed  out  of  the  very  desolations  that 
were  impending  over  it,  and  an  illuminated 
mind  made  an  argument,  recapitulating  the 
story  of  its  first  conquest,  and  saying,  almost  as 
if  he  were  working  out  a  string  of  syllogisms, — 

"  If  they  shall  enter  into  my  rest : 
They  to  whom  it  was  first  preached,  entered  not ; 
It  remains  that  some  must  enter  in ; 
If  Joshua  had  given  them  rest,  he  would  not  afterwards 

have  spoken  of  another  day. 
There  remaineth,  therefore,  a  rest  for  the  people  of  God." 

So  we  conclude  that   it  was    God's  will   to 
make   us   learn    the    lessons   of    our   personal 


I04  UNION  WITH   GOD 

sanctification  out  of  the  migration  of  His 
ancient  people,  and  to  say  of  the  relation 
between  their  fortunes  and  ours,  "  The  Holy 
Ghost  thus  signifying  .  .  .  that  there  remaineth 
a  rest  to  the  people  of  God." 

And  now  let  us  go  a  step  further,  and  with 
the  map  of  Palestine  before  our  eyes,  and  the 
story  of  the  entrance  of  the  children  of  Israel 
before  our  minds,  let  us  say  that  it  appears 
that  the  good  land  and  large  into  which  God 
led  His  people  was  designed  (i)  to  be  surveyed 
from  a  mountain  of  vision  ;  (2)  to  be  entered 
upon  by  a  passage  of  faith.  We  begin  with 
vision  :  because  eyes  take  possession  of  their 
inheritance  before  hands  and  feet ;  and  as  a 
matter  of  fact  hands  take  hold  and  feet  enter 
in  because  eyes  have  seen.  Nothing  is  more 
important  than  a  good  perspective  in  the  king- 
dom of  God ;  until  we  have  a  measure  of 
vision,  there  is  no  place  for  footsteps  of  advancing 
and  appropriating  faith.  Vague  and  general 
notions  as  to  the  kingdom  of  God  are  almost 
worthless  ;  they  never  constitute  the  terms 
of  a  covenant  between  God  and  the  soul. 
Splendour,    glory,    and    immensity,    some    one 


THE  SABBATISM  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD     105 

has  said,  are  great  thoughts,  high  ideas  ;  but 
a  little  definite  happiness  would  be  more  to 
the  purpose.  We  need  to  get  some  informa- 
tion from  God  Himself  as  to  what  it  is  that 
He  is  wanting  to  do  with  us  and  for  us  ;  and 
if  He  opens  the  eyes  of  our  heart  to  the 
knowledge  of  His  will,  and  makes  us  strong 
to  grasp  with  all  saints  the  length  and  breadth 
and  height  of  Redeeming  Love,  we  may  be 
encouraged  to  exchange  the  panorama  for  the 
reality,  and  to  turn  contemplation  into  obedi- 
ence. It  is  for  this  reason  that  our  Lord  in 
His  teaching  on  earth  proclaimed  a  series 
of  beatitudes  in  what  we  call  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount.  These  beatitudes  are  a  series  of 
instantaneous  photographs  of  the  Holy  Life, 
in  which  the  initiated  soul  is  seen  under  so 
many  successive  aspects,  as  mourning  and  as 
merciful,  as  pure  in  heart  and  aspiring  with 
divinely  quickened  desire  ;  but  all  these  de- 
tached views  are  only  so  many  glimpses  of 
what  is  comprehensively  defined  under  the 
head  of  Blessedness  ;  and  just  as  in  Edison's 
newly  invented  kinetograph  a  succession  of 
rapidly  taken  photographs  may  be  recombined 


io6  UNION  WITH  GOD 

into  the   story  of  the  motion  of  an  object,  so 
the   phases   of  beatitude  are   to  be    combined 
together  as  beatitude,   and   then,   seen   in  one 
combination,  are  to  be  the  object  of  the  spiritual 
covetousness  of  the  soul  that  is  ascending  to 
the    Divine    likeness.      When,    therefore,    we 
have  an  intelligent  conception  of  what  blessed- 
ness is,  we  are  on  the  mountain  of  vision  ;  and 
when   we  stand  on  the  mount  of  vision  it  is 
natural  to  say,  "  I  pray  Thee,  let  me  go  over." 
As   we   ascend  the  mountain  of  vision  it  is 
a  counsel  of  the  first  importance  that  we  take 
our  stand  with  our  faces  toward  the  good  land 
and   our  backs   to    the    wilderness.       It    is    a 
panorama  that  lies  in  one  direction  only,  and 
the  vision  depends  on  the  attitude,  as  well  as 
on  the  altitude.     For  this  reason  the  Scriptures 
exhort  us  (i)  negatively,  to  let  the  dead  past 
bury    its    dead,   for  "the  time  past  suffices  to 
have    wrought    the    will    of  the  Gentiles  " ;   to 
"  forget  the  things  that  are  behind,"  and  even 
to  "  leave  the  word  of  the  beginning  of  Christ," 
in  order  that   (2)  positively,   we   may    "  prove 
the   good    and  acceptable   and  perfect  will  of 
God,"  may   "  reach  out  towards  those   things 


THE  SABBATISM  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD    107 

that  are  before,"  and  be  "  carried  forwards  to 
perfection."  And  this  attitude  implies,  amongst 
other  things,  that  we  have  done  with  legal 
years,  and  have  silenced  vain  regrets.  We 
must  exchange  the  obedience  of  the  letter  for 
the  law  of  the  spirit  of  life  which  is  in  Christ 
Jesus.  The  thought  either  of  our  own  loneli- 
ness in  a  wide  world,  or  of  our  own  disappoint- 
ment in  a  contentious  world,  must  be  eclipsed 
by  the  assurance  that  we  shall  neither  be  lonely 
nor  disappointed  when  the  kingdom  of  God 
shall  be  fully  come. 

Of  the  wilderness  life,  then,  it  is  said,  "The 
time  past  suffices "  ;  the  covenant,  moreover, 
of  God  with  the  soul  is  indicated  in  the  words 
with  which  the  Apostle  continues,  "that  we 
should  live  .  .  .  the  rest  of  our  time  ...  to 
the  will  of  God " ;  it  is  a  covenant  with  the 
residue  of  our  days.  And  this  covenant  is 
accepted  by  the  soul  on  the  mountain  of  vision 
in  an  act  of  consecrating  faith  : — 

"  Lord,  in  the  strength  of  grace. 
With  a  glad  heart  and  free, 
Myself,  my  residue  of  days, 
I  consecrate  to  Thee." 


io8  UNION  WITH  GOD 

We  must  not,  however,  forget  that  even  on 
the  mountain  of  vision,  and  when  the  soul  is 
looking  in  the  right  direction,  there  are  such 
mists  as  oftentimes  obscure  the  landscape  even 
to  people  who  wish  to  see.  These  mists  are 
the  results,  in  many  cases,  of  a  false  theology, 
which  has  for  generation  after  generation  in- 
sisted that  God  shall  not  do  for  His  people, 
and  Christ  shall  not  be  to  His  people,  just 
what  the  Scriptures  propound.  It  is  impossible, 
or  almost  impossible,  to  argue  with  persons 
who  are  set  at  strife  with  their  own  blessedness 
by  their  teachers,  but  there  is  one  consideration 
which  is  encouraging,  and  that  is  this :  it  often 
happens  that  to  sincere  people  who  are  seeking 
the  closer  walk  with  God  there  comes  an  ex- 
perience similar  to  that  which  Wordsworth  de- 
scribes in  the  third  book  of  his  Excursion,  when 

"  a  step, 
A  single  step,  that  freed  me  from  the  skirts 
Of  the  blind  vapour,  opened  to  my  view 
Glory  beyond  all  glory,  ever  seen 
By  waking  sense  or  by  the  dreaming  soul. 

That  which  I  saw  was  the  revealed  abode 
Of  spirits  in  beatitude  !  " 


THE  SABBATISM  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  GOD    109 

It  is  a  waste  of  time  to  try  and  fight  with 
the  blind  vapour  of  traditional  misconceptions 
of  God  and  traditional  misinterpretations  of  the 
Scriptures,  when  a  single  step  of  obedience 
will  often  set  us  saying  and  singing  that  **  there 
remaineth  a  rest  to  the  people  of  God," 

We  pass  on  to  the  next  thought,  which  is 
that  our  Lord  who  planned  the  mountain  of 
vision  planned  also  the  passage  of  faith,  the 
river  which  must  be  crossed  before  the  good 
land  is  ours.  He  set  Jordan  on  the  map,  and 
it  is  not  for  us  to  erase  it.  Here  we  are 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  fact  that  we  are 
to  come  down  out  of  the  vision  that  we  may 
go  over  into  the  reality.  The  vision  is  with- 
drawn as  we  descend  to  take  possession  of 
what  God  shows  us  to  be  most  truly  ours :  the 
mystics  call  this  deprivation  which  comes  at  a 
certain  point  in  the  advance  of  the  soul  the 
dark  night  of  faith,  when  every  step  has  to  be 
taken  in  absolute  dependence  upon  God,  and 
assurance  that  the  vision  was  truth  and  no  lie. 
We  drop  into  a  lowly  vale,  as  low  as  the  hill 
was  high  :  it  is  the  valley  of  our  individual 
nothingness,  the  nothingness  of  the  creature. 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


Jacob  is  left  alone,  and  a  strange  angel  wrestles 
with  him  all  night  long,  until  the  day  of  a  new 
covenant-making  (that  shall  also  be  covenant- 
keeping)  dawns  upon  him  ;  until  the  word  of 
blessing  shall  be  spoken,  that  "  as  a  prince 
thou  hast  power  with  God  and  with  man,  and 
hast  prevailed."  The  children  ol  the  Patriarch 
are  brought  to  the  edge  of  the  overflowing 
stream  with  which  faith  has  to  reckon  ;  they  act 
as  though  the  waves  were  rocks,  or  as  though 
the  waters  were  dry  land.  And  the  *'  lovely 
child's  alphabet "  has  nothing  more  lovely  than 
the  thought  of  the  unreserved  obedience  and  un- 
limited submission  which  are  the  characteristics 
of  the  great  surrender  by  which  such  things 
are  claimed  for  our  own  as  "  God  has  laid  up 
for  them  that  love  Him." 

If  this  be  the  alphabet  by  which  God  teaches, 
may  we  be  the  children  that  learn,  the  "  obedient 
children"  (i  Peter  i.  14),  the  **  dear  children" 
(Eph.  V.  i),  the  "little  children"  (i  John  ii.  i), 
the  "children  of  God  "  (i  John  iii.  i). 


VII 

THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM 


"  /  am  the  light  of  the  world." — ^JoHN  vii.  I2. 
"  Ye  are  the  light  of  the  world."— Mk-vt.  v.  14. 


VII 

THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM 

T^TE  put  these  two  verses  side  by  side, 
*  '  because  they  are  so  identical  in  ex- 
pression that  they  must  refer  to  some  marvellous 
possible  oneness  of  character ;  and  since  there 
is  nothing  so  altruistic  or  other-loving  in  the 
world  as  the  sunshine,  which,  as  far  as  we 
know,  is  all  giving  and  no  taking  (a  radiant 
energy  of  which  we  predict  no  return  to  its 
focus),  we  are  entitled  to  conclude  that  an 
altruistic  Saviour  must  be  accompanied  by  a 
people  who  are  saved  in  this  sense,  that  they 
become  themselves  altruistic.  And  for  this 
reason  we  do  not  to-day  print  the  word  "light " 
in  the  passage  from  John  with  a  capital  letter, 
and  in  the  passage  from  Matthew  with  a  small 
letter,  because  the  change  of  the  type  is  not  an 
indication  of  great  faith  or  of  great  humility, 
but  is  too   often   a  mark  of  unbelief  and  her 

»3  g 


114  UNION  WITH  GOD 

elder  sister  pride  (who  affects  humility)  ;  or,  if 
not  exactly  so  bad  as  that,  it  is  a  mark  of  the 
unreality  with  which  we  regard  the  sacred 
humanity.  (Both  these  last  words  also  we 
print  to-day  with  small  letters,  for  the  same 
reason  as  above.)  It  is  quite  true  that  capital 
letters  have  become  a  part  of  the  popular 
religion,  but  the  conviction  grows  upon  us  that 
they  have  been  used  to  excess,  and  to  the 
detriment  of  the  spiritual  life.  Take  up,  for 
instance,  such  a  book  'ssY-axx'd.xs  Life  of  Christ, 
and  notice  how  the  early  life  of  Jesus  is  large- 
typed,  so  that  even  the  simple  word  "  boy  " 
cannot  be  printed  without  being  made  to  suggest 
that  He  was  never  like  other  children.  For 
example,  "  the  Boy  was  with  some  other  group 
of  friends  or  relatives  in  that  long  caravan  "  ; 
*'the  Boy  was  in  the  temple  to  inquire  and 
learn."  We  are  quite  sure  that  such  printing 
throws  an  air  of  undue  mystery  about  what  is 
perfectly  natural,  and  prevents  us  from  entering 
into  fellowship  with  Christ's  early  years,  and 
with  His  mother's  joy  over  the  unfolding  pur- 
pose of  God  in  those  early  years.  He  who 
grew    in  wisdom   and  in   stature  from  day   to 


THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM  115 

day  must  often  have  had  the  added  cubits  of 
His  height  tested  by  human  hands  with  a 
human  rule ;  for  the  Gospel  teaches  us  to 
reverence  the  anthropometry  of  Jesus,  as  well 
as  to  believe  all  that  prophets  have  said,  or 
saints  have  sung,  about  His  redeeming  work 
and  His  changeless  love.  And  it  is  significant 
that  the  records  of  His  life  have  come  down  to 
us  in  manuscripts,  which  the  scholar  knows  to 
have  been  in  the  first  instance  entirely  destitute 
of  the  distinction  of  capital  letters  ;  and  those 
who  are  mystically  inclined,  and  desire  to  realise 
in  their  own  experience  everything  that  is  com- 
municable in  the  life  of  Christ,  will  take  the 
hint,  and  say  to  themselves  over  this  doctrine 
of  altruism,  as  over  everything  else  that  unites 
us  to  the  Lord,  "  that  we  are  in  Him,  in  that 
which  was  from  the  beginning  "  ;  and  "  as  He 
is,  so  are  we  in  this  world."  They  will  aspire 
to  live  with  His  very  life  ;  they  will  kindle 
"  flame  from  flame."  So  much  being  premised 
as  to  the  union  between  the  other-loving  Lord 
and  the  other-loving  people,  we  turn  back  to 
the  fifth  chapter  of  Matthew,  from  which  the 
second  of  the  announcements  of  Christ  quoted 


n6  tlNION  WITH  GOD 

above  is  taken.  The  first  thing  to  be  observed 
with  regard  to  the  verse  is  its  setting  ;  it  is  a 
pearl  set  with  pearls  ;  it  comes  as  a  pendant  to 
the  beatitudes,  and  therefore  is  itself  a  sum-total 
of  beatitude,  even  though  the  word  "  Blessed" 
be  not  immediately  prefixed.  The  fifth  chapter 
of  Matthew,  in  its  opening  verses,  is  a  kind  of 
spiritual  maelstrom,  which  draws  us  down  by- 
successive  rings  and  whirls  into  untold  depths 
of  self-abnegation  and  abandonment  to  God. 
Against  each  one  of  them  might  be  written,  as 
a  marginal  comment,  the  words,  "  The  kingdom 
of  heaven  is  at  hand  "  ;  and  against  the  totality 
of  them  the  words,  "  The  kingdom  of  God  is 
come."  And  the  soul  that  is  in  any  one  of  the 
experiences  indicated  by  the  successive  beati- 
tudes finds  that  the  experience  over  which  the 
blessing  is  spoken  is  in  close  correspondence 
with  a  similar  experience  in  the  life  and  mani- 
festation of  Jesus  Christ. 

We  can  sit  down  with  these  verses,  and  mark 
a  marginal  reference  to  each  one  of  them  out  of 
the  Scriptures  of  Christ's  life  ;  we  can  note  His 
poverty  over  against  ours,  and  let  the  same 
mind  be  in  us  which  was  in   Him  who  made 


THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM  117 

Himself  poor  for  our  sakes.  We  can  put  our 
mourners'  tears  into  Christ's  bottle,  and  find 
that  it  is  not  an  empty  bottle,  but  the  receptacle 
of  the  sympathy  which  dropped  at  Bethany 
and  the  strong  waters  of  Gethsemane.  The 
meek,  whom  He  felicitates,  are  blessed  by 
Him  who  was  both  meek  and  lowly,  and  their 
promised  inheritance  is  a  portion  of  His  own 
boundless  right  and  His  own  fathomless  rest. 
They  are  hungry  and  thirsty  for  the  same 
Divine  will,  which  was  the  meat  and  drink  for 
which  He  discarded  or  postponed  the  lesser 
nourishments ;  they  are  merciful  because  their 
Lord  is  compassionate,  and  as  He  was  good 
to  the  thankless  and  evil,  so  are  they  to  the 
extent  of  being  '^foolishly,  incredibly  merciful." 
Their  heart-purity  is  the  circulation  of  His 
life-blood  and  the  anointing  of  His  Spirit  ; 
their  peace-making  proves  them  to  belong  to 
the  Prince  of  Peace,  who  is  also  called  the  Son 
of  Peace,  and  more  briefly  the  Peace  ;  and  the 
great  beatitude  which  closes  the  announcement, 
the  persecution  which  ends  the  tale  of  good  as 
the  Cross  ended  the  work  of  His  earthly  life, 
cannot  be  read   apart    from  the  preface,    "  As 


ii8  UNION  WIIH  GOD 

they  have  persecuted  Me,  they  will  also  perse- 
cute you."  The  beatitudes  are,  therefore,  as 
we  said  in  a  previous  chapter,  so  many  instan- 
taneous views  of  the  manifold  grace  of  God  in 
Christ. 

And  it  follows  from  this  that  any  one  who  is 
a  sincere  believer  will  recognise  the  unity  which 
underlies  the  various  manifestations  of  God  in 
character,  and  will  sedulously  avoid  the  thought 
that  he  is  in  the  world  to  illustrate  special 
virtues  ;  much  less  will  he  think  to  apologise  to 
God  for  special  failings  by  special  excellencies. 
The  covetousness  of  the  enlightened  soul  is 
not  limited  to  one  beatitude,  but  takes  hold 
on  all ;  nor  do  we  truly  aspire,  unless  we  wish 
to  ascend  every  time  that  God  lets  down  the 
ladder,  and  whenever  we  see  any  one  else 
ascending.  The  thought  of  being  meek  but 
not  pure,  forbearing  but  not  compassionate,  is 
foolish  with  the  radical  absurdity  of  a  divided 
Christ.  If  the  soldiers  who  crucified  Him 
respected  His  body  that  it  might  not  be  broken, 
and  spared  His  coat  because  it  was  made  in 
one  piece,  let  us  reverence  the  unity  of  His 
spirit,  and  covet  the  seamlessness  of  His  virtue 


THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM  119 

and  of  His  obedience,  for  even  in  the  believer 
it  may  be  said  that  "  the  good  is  one." 

But  having  seen  Christ  in  the  words  of  Christ, 
we  want  in  the  next  place  to  read  the  beatitudes 
in  the  light  of  the  history  of  man,  and  especially 
the  question  must  be  asked  in  the  Scriptures 
which   men  are   asking   in  the  world  at  large. 
The  discussion  is  going  on  amongst  scientific 
men  and  philosophers  as  to  whether  the  order 
of  human  society  is  becoming  more  altruistic  ; 
and   in   order  to   solve   this  question  they   are 
asking,  "  What  is  the  origin  of  altruism  ?  "  with 
the  same  earnestness  that  they  ask  the  question, 
"What  is  the  origin  of  life.'*"     We  want  to 
know  when  man,  in  his  own  history  and  in  the 
history  of  his  ancestors,  became  other-loving, 
as  against  self-loving.     Did  the  beginning  show 
the  love  for  others  as  well  as  the  love  of  and  care 
for  self-life?     And  when  other-love  appeared, 
did  it  appear  in  the  disguise  of  children,  or  in 
the  form   or  fashion   of  friends,  or  how  did  it 
come  ;  and  being  come,  what  are  the  laws  of  its 
growth,  development,  and  perfection  ?    Nothing 
is  more  hopeful  than  that  science  and  philosophy 
should  be  pursuing  these  questions.     They  must 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


run  up  against  the  Cross  on  this  path  ;  and  if 
they  run  up  against  the  Cross,  it  will  go  hard  if 
they  do  not  run  into  the  glory  that  accompanies 
the  Cross. 

Now  we  are  not  philosophers,  and  cannot 
answer  the  hard  questions  which  they  put ;  but 
we  can  search  the  Scriptures  and  scrutinise  the 
calling  of  the  saints  for  altruism,  and  not  go 
far  before  we  find  it.  Suppose  we  ask  the 
question  with  regard  to  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  with  its  magnificent  prologue  and  pro- 
mise of  good,  Is  it  individualist  or  altruist  in 
its  teaching  ?  The  answer  is  that  it  is,  in  the 
first  place,  profoundly  individualist;  the  blessings 
are  on  personal  experiences,  upon  individual 
longings.  Hunger  and  thirst,  even  when  right- 
eousness is  the  aliment,  is  individual.  To  be 
meek  and  inherit  the  earth  almost  looks  like 
the  much-reviled  capitalist  disguised.  Of  the 
nine  blessings  enumerated,  seven  relate  to  our 
own  experience,  without  any  apparently  direct 
good  to  the  'neighbour  or  to  the  social  organism  ; 
only  two  relate  to  the  good  of  others.  The  one 
speaks  of  the  exercise  of  mercy,  the  other  of 
the  making  of  peace.     But  even  these  are  not 


THE   CONTAGION  OF  AL7RUISM 


dissociated  from  personal  revenue  and  income. 
"Ye  shall  obtain  mercy"  ;  "ye  shall  be  called 
God's  bairns."  Perhaps  there  may  be  some 
who  would  take  offence  at  this,  and  say  that 
the  mystic  is  not  so  very  different  to  the  more 
grossly  selfishly  living  people,  who  want  to  get 
all  the  good  that  there  is  for  themselves  alone, 
and  to  leave  other  people  behind,  in  the  very 
same  way  as  is  done  in  the  more  common  form 
of  the  strife  for  existence.  But  this  misunder- 
standing would  arise  from  not  observing  that 
every  one  of  these  personal  blessings  is  so 
placed  as  to  lead  up  to  the  two  great  announce- 
ments which  Christ  makes  over  the  people  that 
have  passed  under  His  blessing  hands.  These 
two  statements  are  :  (i)  ye  are  the  salt  of  the 
earth  ;  (ii)  ye  are  the  light  of  the  world.  And 
this  is  not  individualism,  much  less  is  it  self-life 
and  self-love  ;  it  is  pure  undiluted  altruism. 
We  are  in  the  world  to  be  sweet  and  make 
it  sweet ;  to  be  enlightened  and  to  give  light. 
Christ's  salt  and  Christ's  sunbeams  have  nothing 
of  self-love  about  them  ;  it  is  other-love  pure 
and  simple.  It  is  Christ  in  me  that  it  may  be 
Christ  through  me.     Some  people  who  look  at 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


Raphael's  Transfiguration  are  a  little  offended 
that  the  picture  has  been  crowded  with  two 
different  scenes.  It  is  a  very  large  canvas,  and 
would  have  made  two  pictures  very  well — one, 
of  the  saints  in  the  light  with  Jesus,  and  one, 
of  the  crowd  and  the  suffering  child  and  suffer- 
ing father  around  Jesus  ;  one  picture  for  the 
top  of  the  mountain,  and  another  for  the  next 
day  at  the  mountain's  foot.  But  Raphael  was 
right ;  the  two  pictures  must  be  made  into  one  ; 
and  every  rapture  is  only  the  preface  to  an  action 
or  a  passion.  One  frame  must  hold  them  both. 
And  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  if  there 
is  any  ground  for  the  belief  that  in  the  world 
at  large  God  is  making  people  altruistic,  even 
against  their  will,  and  by  all  kinds  of  irregular 
pressure,  much  more  is  it  true  that  the  whole  of 
the  economy  of  grace  in  the  creature  is  accom- 
plishing the  same  loving  purpose  with  untold 
directness  of  aim  in  the  children  of  God.  We 
learned  the  Lord's  Prayer  in  the  plural,  and 
our  daily  spiritual  progress  only  makes  the 
plural  into  a  larger  majority.  And  happily  for 
our  faith  it  is  precisely  at  this  point  of  our 
advance  that  our  religion  becomes  so  delight- 


THE  CONTAGION  OF  ALTRUISM  123 

fully  intelligible  to  everybody.  "  Ye  are  the 
light  of  the  world,"  said  Jesus.  "  Neither  do 
men  light  a  candle,"  He  continued. 

"  Heaven  doth  with  us  as  we  with  torches  do, 
Not  Hght  them  for  themselves," 

said  Shakespeare.  Was  he  stealing  from  the 
Gospel  ?  If  so,  then  the  Gospel  was  easy  to 
appropriate :  but  it  does  not  cease  to  be  Gospel. 

"  How  far  that  little  candle  sheds  its  beams  !  " 

You  can  write  that  sentence  as  a  marginal 
comment  to  the  words,  "Ye  shall  be  witnesses 
unto  Me  in  Jerusalem  .  ,  .  and  to  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the  earth,"  and  not  defile  the 
sacred  page  by  the  quotation.  And  it  may  be 
written  over  the  limitations  and  incapacity  of 
any  consecrated  life. 

As  we  began  our  meditation  by  choosing 
ourselves  texts  out  of  the  sunbeams,  and  have 
been  led  to  see  ourselves  united  to  Christ  not 
only  in  His  life,  but  also  in  the  altruism  of 
His  life,  it  will  not  be  amiss  to  conclude  with 
the  prayer  that  we  may  be  as  other-loving  as 
the  sunshine,  and  as  the  compassions  of  God  in 
Christ. 


VIII 

HE    THAT  IS   JOINED    UNTO    THE   LORD    IS 
ONE   SPIRIT" 


He  that  is  joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  spirit^ — i  CuR.  vi.  x"]. 


126 


VIII 

''HE    THAT  IS   JOINED    UNTO    THE    LORD    IS 
ONE    SPIRIT" 

WE  have  in  our  New  Testament  the 
Epistles  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians 
— Epistles  which  concern  themselves  with  the 
religious  needs  and  difficulties  of  the  time,  but 
which  are  constantly  in  their  language  passing 
beyond  the  needs  and  difficulties  of  any 
particular  time,  and  taking  us  over  to  those 
needs  which  are  the  eternal  needs  of  the 
Church,  and  those  blessed  satisfactions  of  the 
soul  which  are  the  eternal  vindications  of  God 
to  His  creatures  that  trust  in  Him.  If  we 
picked  up  these  two  Epistles  and  found  them 
anywhere,  without  any  headlines  or  titles  or 
names  upon  them,  with  no  address  of  the 
people  for  whom  they  were  intended,  and  no 
introduction  expressing  the  person  from  whom 
they  came,   we  could    very   easily,   by  a    little 


128  UNION   WITH  GOD 

Study,  determine  a  great  deal  both  with  regard 
to  the  person  who  wrote  the  Epistles  and  also 
with  regard  to  the  people  for  whom  they  were 
intended ;  it  would  not  be,  for  instance,  very 
difficult  to  show  you  that  they  were  addressed 
to  a  trading  community,  to  a  people  that  were 
largely  occupied  in  commercial  life,  for  the 
language  takes  a  business  tone,  and  the  ex- 
pressions which  are  used  even  with  regard 
to  spiritual  things  are  very  often  expressions 
which  are  taken  up  from  the  market-place  and 
from  the  shop.  For  example,  in  2  Cor.  ii.  17, 
the  writer  of  these  Epistles  says  :  "  We  are 
not  of  those  people  who  huckster,  or  adulterate 
the  Word  of  God  ;  but  we  speak  out  of 
sincerity,  and  we  speak  as  from  God,  as  stand- 
ing face  to  face  with  God  in  Christ."  And  if 
you  look  a  verse  or  two  further  back  than  that, 
the  eleventh  verse,  you  will  find  the  same 
writer  saying  that  he  hopes  we  shall  not  be 
over-reached  by  Satan,  because  we  are  not 
ignorant  of  his  sharp  practices.  Now  a  writer 
who  expresses  himself  in  that  way  is  writing 
to  a  trading  community,  and  you  would  easily 
be  able,  if  you   were  studying  these   Epistles 


"HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO   THE  LORD''    129 

for  the  first  time,  and  trying  to  find  out  some- 
thing about  them,  to  see  that  they  were  written 
to  people  Hving  on  one  of  the  great  trade 
routes  of  the  East.  Not  only  so,  but  we  find 
something  about  the  character  of  the  people 
to  whom  these  letters  were  addressed.  They 
were  living  in  the  midst  of  a  bad  world,  but 
they  were  also  themselves  a  part  of  the  bad- 
ness of  that  world.  It  is  not  a  pleasant  record 
to  read  ;  it  is  a  fatal  Epistle  for  those  who 
wish  to  prove  that  the  ancient  Churches  were 
all  good  and  the  modern  are  all  bad.  We 
do  not  mean  to  attack  primitive  Christianity. 
The  inspiration  of  the  Church  is  a  magnificent 
truth.  Pentecost  is  rightly  called  Whit  Sunday, 
i.e.  White  Sunday,  and  that  means  white  faith, 
white  heart,  white  garments :  the  primitive 
Church  had  that.  In  that  sense  we  desire  to 
be  more  and  more  baptised  into  the  spirit  of 
the  primitive  Church,  more  to  speak  as  they 
did,  to  be  consecrated  as  they  were,  to  follow 
the  Lamb  as  they  did,  to  be  glorified  along  with 
them  even  in  this  present  life.  There  is  such 
a  thing  as  primitive  Christianity  ;  but  you  will 
have  to  be  careful  where  you  look  for  it.     You 

9 


130  UNION  WITH  GOD 

will  not  find  it  in  the  theory  of  the  necessary 
infallibility  of  the  teachers  or  the  immaculate- 
ness  of  the  people  who  were  taught.  I  have 
often  made  the  mistake  of  trying  to  find  in 
the  first  century  things  which  one  hoped  were 
specially  characteristic  of  the  first  century,  but 
which  in  reality  were  not  so.  But  I  found 
God  in  history,  and  Christ  in  the  power  ot 
His  people,  and  just  as  great  a  Christ  as  I 
am  able  to  find  without  any  history  at  all  when 
I  place  myself  on  believing  ground,  or  mingle 
with  other  persons  who  are  in  the  same  spirit 
of  faith — the  nineteenth-century  Jesus  Christ, 
this  same  Jesus.  Church  history  is  good,  but 
it  won't  represent  to  us  a  spotless  Church. 
On  the  contrary,  it  represents  to  us  Churches 
such  as  some  of  us  would  not  have  liked  to 
belong  to,  which  we  should  perhaps  have 
wanted  to  escape  from  into  purer  surroundings, 
even  if  we  had  to  go  out  into  the  desert  to 
find  them.  And  that  definitely  is  the  kind  of 
community  that  these  Epistles  are  written  to — 
a  community,  if  we  can  judge  by  their  vices, 
their  failures  and  lapses,  exactly  similar  to 
what  history  tells  us  to  have  been  characteristic 


''HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO  THE  LORD''    131 

of  all  the  cities  of  the  Levant  and  most  of  the 
cities  of  the  great  ancient  world  ;  and,  as  I 
have  said,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  reconstruct 
from  these  letters  what  was  the  personality  of 
the  person  who  wrote  them,  and  what  were 
also  the  character  and  life  of  the  people  to 
whom  they  were  written.  These  writings  are 
water-marked  heavily,  and  as  we  hold  them 
up  to  the  light  we  see  that  if  they  had  no  titles, 
and  if  the  name  of  Paul  was  blotted  out  every 
time  it  occurred  in  the  writings,  we  could  still 
decipher  and  unravel  enough  to  tell  us  the 
character  of  the  writer  as  well  as  the  time  and 
the  place.  We  could  tell  the  people  to  whom 
they  were  written,  and  approximately  the  date 
at  which  they  were  composed.  That  is,  of 
course,  a  result  of  criticism.  Criticism  is 
busied  to  determine  truth  and  to  recognise 
historical  fact  in  literature.  And  do  not  be 
afraid  of  criticism.  You  may  be  afraid  of  all 
the  dishonest  criticism,  and  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  it ;  but  you  will  dishonour  Christ  if 
you  are  afraid  of  criticism,  because  no  man  is 
going  to  gain  anything  in  his  work  for  God  by 
discounting   and   undervaluing   the   services   of 


132  UNION  WITH  GOD 

persons  who  may  be  finding  out  the  truth  of 
God  more  carefully  than   we  are  able  to   do, 
even  though  it  be  only  the  truth  of  God  as  it 
appears   in  outward  history.     But  behind  this 
historical  water-mark  I  see  another  water-mark 
of  a   different    description,  the   water-mark    of 
inspiration,  that  is  to  say,  that  the  statements 
made   are    not    merely   results    deduced   from 
observed  outward  facts,  but  they  are  arrived  at 
by  the  inward  observations  of  God's  ways  with 
men,  and  expressed  in  words   which   criticism 
can    never   do    anything   with,   except    on    the 
natural  side,   where  it  sometimes  ventures  to 
suggest  that  the  experiences  affirmed  are  mere 
extravagances  ;   words  which,  when  spoken  in 
the  midst  of  a  community  of  people  who  want 
God,  or  of  people  who  know  God,  arouse  at 
any  time   in  the   history   of  the  world   or  the 
Church  the  same  kind  of  emotion  and  provoke 
the  same  kind  of  acceptation  that  they  did  at 
the  beginning  ;  words  like  this  strangely  time- 
less expression  of  the  Apostle  :    "  He   that  is 
joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  spirit."     You  do 
not   need  to  go   back   to   Corinth  at  all  ;   you 
do  not  go  hunting  around  asking  what  was  the 


''HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO  THE  LORD"    133 

State  of  the  Church  ;  then  but  you  sink  down 
into  the  midst  of  your  own  experience  and  the 
experience  of  the  people  among  whom  God 
has  placed  you,  and  into  the  sense  and  know- 
ledge of  your  own  standing  to-day,  and  the 
standing  of  the  people  of  God  to-day  ;  and  you 
recognise  it  to  be  a  great,  eternal  word  of 
God  that  is  spoken  when  we  say  that  "  He 
that  is  joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  spirit." 
And  when  we  have  got  that  in  sight,  we  have 
got  away  from  the  difficulties  and  from  the 
divisions — there  is  no  more  Calvinist  or 
Arminian  ;  because  these  words  take  you  right 
up  into  the  very  presence  of  Christ ;  and  if  you 
are  under  the  will  of  the  Lord,  they  fill  you 
with  the  outpoured  and  communicated  life  of 
Jesus  in  the  soul.  This  is  our  charter,  which 
is  not  in  dogma,  except  where  dogma  in  an 
introduction  and  part  of  experience,  but  it  is 
in  the  great  supercarnal,  supersensual  fact  that 
is  above  observation  of  history  and  above  mere 
record  of  emotions,  the  great  fact  of  the  revela- 
tion of  God  and  the  communication  of  God  to 
the  creature.  "  He  that  is  joined  unto  the 
Lord  is  one  spirit." 


134  UNION  WITH  GOD 

Now  I  suppose  we  might  go  on  and  say, 
in  the  next  place,  that  this  truth,  at  any  rate, 
comes  in  a  very  unlikely  setting.  I  am  not 
going  to  draw  your  attention  to  the  whole  of 
this  chapter  ;  I  would  do  it  if  it  were  necessary. 
It  is  a  bad  enough  world  to  make  almost  any 
record  of  bad  things  appropriate  in  a  certain 
sense  at  any  time  ;  but  the  study  of  evil  is  not 
what  we  are  aiming  at ;  because  we  notice 
this,  that  the  Apostle,  who  was  engaged  in  a 
very  troublesome  and  difficult  work,  the  work 
of  discipline  in  the  Corinthian  Church,  engaged 
in  a  heartbreaking  work  which  often  brought 
tears  to  his  eyes,  and  brought  him  to  his 
knees  in  the  great  intercession  before  God — 
the  Apostle,  I  say,  dropped  the  subject  he  had 
in  hand,  and  took  up  the  subject  which  he  had 
in  heart.  The  subject  which  he  had  in  hand 
was  the  sin  that  had  crept  into  the  Church, 
the  breaking  out  of  apostasy,  the  presence  of 
immorality  and  impurity  in  the  Church,  and  he 
dealt  with  them  faithfully  as  a  good  apostle  of 
Jesus  Christ ;  but  as  a  good  apostle  of  Jesus 
Christ  he  did  not  limit  himself  to  dealing  with 
sin.      If  we  only  deal   with   sin,    we   shall   not 


'^  HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO  THE  LORD''     135 

preach  God  in  the  sense  that  God  ought  to  be 
preached.  We  have  got  to  preach  the  king- 
dom of  righteousness,  of  peace  and  joy  in  the 
Holy  Ghost ;  and  so  he  breaks  away  from  the 
subject  which  he  has  in  hand  to  the  subject 
which  he  has  in  heart,  and  that  is  the  subject 
which  asserts  itself,  as  it  were,  spontaneously 
in  the  current  of  the  Epistle,  as  much  as  to 
say,  "  That  is  what  I  would  like  to  talk  to 
you  about  if  I  could."  And  you  can  see  that 
again  in  the  third  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Philippians,  where  he  has  again  to  deplore  the 
declension  of  a  great  many  who  had  forsaken 
the  love  of  God  and  the  glory  of  Christ  : 
"  Many  walk,  of  whom  I  have  told  you  often, 
and  now  tell  you  even  weeping,  that  they  are 
the  enemies  of  the  cross  of  Christ  ;  whose  end 
is  destruction,  whose  God  is  their  belly,  and 
whose  glory  is  in  their  shame,  who  mind  earthly 
things."  But  in  the  midst  of  his  tears  and  in 
the  midst  of  his  mourning,  with  the  Church,  as 
it  were,  going  to  pieces  over  his  head  and 
about  his  ears,  he  says,  "  Our  life  is  in  heaven, 
and  it  is  from  thence  we  look  for  the  Saviour, 
the  Lord  Jesus,  who  shall  change  our  vile  body, 


136  UNION  WITH  GOD 

that  it  may  be  fashioned  according  to  the  body 
of  His  glory."  You  see  it  is  a  spontaneous 
thought  that  broke  into  the  midst  of  the  death 
that  was  breaking  into  the  Church  ;  the  thought 
that  broke  it  was  this  :  Our  Hfe  is  in  heaven, 
we  are  joined  to  the  Lord,  and  we  are  one 
spirit  with  Him,  That  is  a  great  truth  ;  it  is 
a  beautiful  pearl  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  I 
do  not  care  about  the  disagreeable  Corinthian 
oyster-shell  ;  we  are  going  to  preach  the  pearl. 
If  any  man  or  woman  got  a  fair  sight  of  what 
it  was  to  be  one  with  God  and  live  in  the  one- 
ness and  testify  to  it  and  suffer  for  it,  which  is 
the  Christian's  real  inheritance,  his  true  testi- 
mony, his  proper  characteristic,  and  compre- 
hended even  faintly  and  afar  the  utmost  and 
furthermost  that  God  can  make  us  experi- 
mentally to  realise,  he  would  say,  I  shall  sell 
all  I  have  in  order  to  find  this  beautiful  pearl, 
which  has  shone  out  for  me  from  the  pages  of 
the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  and  which 
also  shines  out  for  me  from  almost  every  hymn 
that  I  sing  and  from  almost  every  sermon  that 
I  hear  preached,  even  when  the  minister  did 
not  intend  to  preach  quite  so  far.      Praise  God, 


"HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO  THE  LORD''    137 

we  always  hear  a  good  measure  of  the  Gospel 
even  from  backward  preachers  of  it.  I  have 
heard  ministers  who  did  not  believe  in  the 
baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost  pray  for  it  in  their 
prayers.  I  sometimes  think  that  God  will 
hear  unbelieving  prayers  for  believing  people. 
At  any  rate,  whether  we  believe  or  not,  the 
word  and  the  promise  of  God  is  not  made 
of  none  effect  to-day  ;  and,  wherever  there  is 
a  real  word  of  God  uttered,  the  utterance  is  a 
blessing  in  some  degree,  though  not  of  course 
to  the  same  extent  as  when  it  falls  from  faithful 
lips,  and  is  addressed  direct  to  believing  hearts. 
May  God  make  us  believe  in  what  we  say,  and 
if  any  one  prays  for  the  baptism,  do  at  least 
pray,  "  God  grant  that  I  may  be  able  to  receive 
and  to  witness  it." 

Our  life,  then,  is  this  glorious  life  of  which 
we  are  told,  "  He  that  is  joined  unto  the  Lord 
is  one  spirit."  We  may  be  sure  of  this,  that 
there  2s  no  necessity  whatever  for  any  one  zvho 
has  such  a  life  as  this  to  be  disturbed  from  it. 
I  suppose,  if  anybody  had  a  right  to  be,  it  was 
a  person  who  had  apparently  been  spending 
his  strength   in  vain   and  labouring,  according 


138  UNION  WITH  GOD 

to  the  outward  judgment,  for  nought.  There 
is  no  more  trying  or  difficult  circumstance  than 
to  bring  people  to  God — at  any  rate,  in  appear- 
ance— and  then  to  see  them  go  back  from  that 
which  they  profess  to  have  found.  There  is 
not  anything  more  likely  to  break  the  heart  of 
any  one  who  has  to  preach  the  Word  of  God 
than  to  find  that  his  ministry  has  the  Corinthian 
or  Philippian  accompaniment  in  any  degree 
among  those  to  whom  he  is  sent — the  accom- 
paniment of  apostasy.  To  preach  Christ,  and 
then  find  people  deny  Him  ;  to  proclaim  the 
goodness  of  God  and  the  Reconciliation,  and 
then  see  them  in  any  degree  trample  under 
foot  the  blood  of  the  Everlasting  Covenant, — 
I  tell  you,  if  it  crucifies  Christ  afresh,  it  also 
crucifies  the  ministers  of  Jesus  afresh  ;  because 
they  share  the  failure,  as  it  seems  outwardly, 
of  Christ ;  and  if  Christ  can  be  heartbroken  or 
heart-crucified,  they  must  be  heartbroken  and 
heart-crucified  too.  And  yet  it  is  not  so  with 
the  Apostle.  In  the  midst  of  all  this  disappoint- 
ment, when  you  see  very  little  of  God  in  the 
primitive  Church,  very  little  to  encourage  him, 
everything  to  provoke  tears,  he  breaks  out  into 


''HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO   THE  LORD''    139 

what  is  nothing  less  than  a  psalm  in  a  sentence, 
"  He  that  is  joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  spirit," 
and  goes  up  into  heaven  itself,  as  it  were,  in 
order  that  he  may  escape  from  the  depression 
and  the  difficulty  that  he  finds  down  here.  If 
any  one  had  a  right  to  be  discouraged,  Paul 
had  ;  but  he  was  not  discouraged,  because  he 
could  not  be  discouraged  without  losing  his 
union,  and  he  could  not  sacrifice  that  without 
losing  everything  that  he  held  dear ;  and  if 
we  are  one  with  God  we  won't  be  discouraged. 
There  are  a  great  many  centrifugal  influences 
which  would  take  us  away  from  our  centre  all 
the  time ;  there  are  a  thousand  forces  which 
remove  us  from  blessedness,  and  sometimes 
seem  to  keep  us  at  war  with  blessedness  ;  but 
even  amid  all  this,  the  strong  constraint  of  a 
Redeemer's  love  which  we  have  felt  and  known, 
and  that  fellowship  with  Him  which  we  have 
in  service  and  in  everything  else,  the  great 
magnetism  is  stronger  than  that  which  con- 
tradicts it,  the  positive  more  than  the  negative. 
"  What  shall  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
Christ  ?  Shall  tribulation,  or  distress,  or  perse- 
cution, or    famine,  or   nakedness,  or  peril,   or 


HO  UNION  WITH  GOD 

sword" — the  being  slain  all  day  long  for  the 
kingdom's  sake  ?  "  Nay  ;  in  all  these  things 
we  are  more  than  conquerors  "  ;  for  the  centri- 
petal influence  is  more  than  the  centrifugal. 
Now,  beloved,  we  may  realise  that  for  ourselves 
in  every  possible  environment.  I  sometimes 
say  that  those  closing  verses  of  the  eighth 
chapter  of  Romans,  of  which  I  quoted  one  or 
two  just  now,  are  about  the  greatest  words  that  a 
human  soul  has  ever  said  of  what  God  can  do 
to  those  who  believe  in  Him  and  rest  in  Him. 
These  verses  constitute  in  the  Apostle's  mind 
the  creation  of  an  ideal  adverse  environment 
with  which  he  proposes  that  the  life  which  is 
within  him  can  deal.  How  much  can  you 
stand  ?  How  much  will  it  take  to  disunite  you 
from  God  }  A  cross  word,  a  misunderstanding, 
a  commercial  loss,  a  little  difference  in  the 
amount  you  carry  about  with  you,  and  which 
you  are  perfectly  sure  you  are  not  going  to 
carry  away  with  you— a  very  little  difference  of 
this  kind  will  separate  some  people  from  God. 
A  bankruptcy  court  will  do  it,  and  with  some 
people  something  very  much  short  of  a  bank- 
ruptcy  court  will  do  it.     To  have  an  account 


"HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO   THE  LORD''    141 

presented  twice  will  put  some  people  out  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  Now  make  your  adverse  en- 
vironment ideal  ;  it  is  a  lawful  question,  because 
you  will  get  better  saved  when  you  know  what 
can  separate  you.  The  testimony  of  the  power 
of  Christ  to  the  Apostle  to  keep  him  saved  and 
to  keep  him  sweet  was  never  intended,  and  those 
who  love  God  will  say  it  never  could  have 
been  intended,  to  imply  an  apostolic  monopoly 
of  holiness.  We,  too,  can  say,  "Jesus,  I  trust 
Thee  to  keep  me  through  all  surroundings," 
"  Life  or  death  or  any  other  creature  "  ;  put 
these  amongst  the  centrifugal  influences,  and 
when  you  have  put  them  there  put  in  this 
great  centripetal  sentence,  which  takes  us  up 
to  the  source  from  whence  we  come  and  from 
which  we  live,  "  He  that  is  joined  unto  the 
Lord  is  one  spirit."  It  is  pantheistic,  beloved, 
strongly  pantheistic  ;  but  we  do  not  propose  to 
let  the  theosophists  have  all  the  pantheism  to 
themselves.  We  have  got  some  of  it  too.  If 
you  do  not  like  the  term  pantheistic,  say  pan- 
christic.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  say  that  I 
believe  there  is  an  experience  of  union  with 
the     Lord    which    is    rightly    characterised    as 


142  UNION  WITH  GOD 

pantheistic,  in  which  God  has  met  all  the  needs 
of  the  soul,  and  has  become  the  indwelling 
power  of  the  human  spirit ;  that  the  man  who 
is  thus  united  to  God  moves  as  God  moves, 
and  acts  as  the  Lord  wills  him  to  act  in  the 
body  and  in  the  circumstances  in  which  he  is 
placed.  Of  course  it  is  somewhat  pantheistic  ; 
but  Christ  can  be  all  in  all  in  the  nineteenth 
century  as  well  as  in  the  first,  and  we  do  not 
need  to  think  Him  less  than  He  wishes  to  be 
to  those  who  trust  in   Him. 

Of  all  things  that  separate  us,  and  they  are 
many,  the  one  great  cause  of  separation, 
perhaps,  is  the  fact  that  the  love  which  is  in 
the  world  seems  to  be  of  a  non-permanent 
character.  The  greatest  thing  in  the  world  is 
love.  I  never  ask  God,  or  hardly  ever,  for 
outward  things ;  I  do  not  know  that  I  ever 
asked  Him  for  glory  or  honour,  and  I  hope 
I  never  shall  ;  and  I  very  seldom  ask  Him 
for  material  things  apart  from  the  kingdom  ; 
but  I  sometimes  say  things  like  this,  that  if 
God  will  give  me  three  or  four  good  friends,  I 
think  I  can  manage  to  continue  to  the  end, 
because  love  is  the  machinery  of  life  and  the 


"HE  THAI  IS  JOINED    UNTO   THE  LORD''    143 

motive  power.  Love  is  the  centre  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  If  there  is  any  heaven  on 
earth,  I  know  what  it  is  going  to  be  made 
out  of — the  red-hot  charity  of  believers  to 
one  another,  and  the  affection  of  those  who  are 
drawn  nearest  to  us  in  Christ.  And  yet,  strange 
to  say,  that  wonderful  thing  is  just  what  seems 
to  be  one  of  the  separable  things  in  life.  You 
have  not  only  your  own  grave  open  before  you, 
but  a  great  many  other  people's  graves  ;  and 
as  we  are  getting  further  on  in  life  and  passing 
along,  our  waymarks  cease  to  be  milestones, 
and  become  gravestones.  I  have  not  got  on 
any  funeral  raiment,  because  I  never  wear  it  ; 
the  days  of  my  mourning  are  ended,  thank  God  ; 
but  you  must  not  suppose  I  have  never  had 
anything  to  do  with  this  apparent  separability 
of  love,  in  which  we  seem  to  see  so  much  that 
contradicts  God.  There  is  a  picture,  is  there 
not  }  of  John  Wesley  preaching  on  a  gravestone 
in  Ep worth  Churchyard.  It  was  very  well  for 
him  to  do  so  ;  but  the  funeral  was,  I  think,  not 
a  recent  one.  God  can  help  you  to  do  some- 
thing like  what  Wesley  did  on  a  recent  grave- 
stone— He  can  help  you  to  say,   "  He  that  is 


144  UNION   WITH  GOD 

joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  spirit,"  in  the  midst 
of  trials  and  bereavements  as  you  face  them, 
and,  what  is  harder  still,  when  you  turn  after 
the  first  experience  of  desolation  to  look  back 
at  them.  I  have  to  a  very  great  extent  got  rid 
of  the  idea  of  a  frontier  between  the  two  worlds. 
I  suppose  there  is  a  frontier,  but  it  is  like  the 
frontier  that  you  see  between  the  countries  on 
the  Continent,  where  there  is  an  area  of  delimi- 
tation on  either  side.  That  area,  on  this  side, 
is  called  the  Beulah  Land  ;  and  note,  not  only 
does  the  Saviour  come  and  walk  with  men,  but 
the  spirits  of  the  just  made  perfect  come  and 
walk  with  us,  come  to  attend  our  spiritual 
meetings,  and  are  deeply  interested  in  the 
progress  of  human  souls  in  holiness,  and  in 
the  way  they  take  their  thrones  and  claim 
their  crowns.  They  come  and  walk  with  us  in 
order  that  we  may  be  able  to  say  and  to  sing 
that  we  are  one  family,  one  Church  above  and 
beneath,  though  now  divided  by  the  narrow 
stream  of  death.  There  is  no  separation  for 
those  who  are  joined  to  the  Lord,  and  are  one 
spirit  in  Him. 

Next  to  death  I  do  not  know  anything  much 


''HE  THAI  IS  JOINED    UNTO   THE  LORD''    145 

worse  than  loneliness.  Misunderstanding  is 
bad,  but  loneliness  in  some  ways  is  harder  to 
bear,  especially  for  social  beings,  and  we  are  all 
social  when  we  are  at  our  best.  Nothing  is  so 
bad  as  being  disjoined  from  those  whom  we 
love  by  those  isolations  which  come  necessarily 
in  life,  apart  from  death.  Take  a  specimen — 
St.  John  in  the  island,  the  loving  St.  John,  the 
well-beloved  St.  John,  who  could  find  enough 
material  in  his  experience  and  in  his  hope  to 
preach  on  the  text,  "  Little  children,  love  one 
another,"  all  the  year  round,  and  never  find 
the  subject  grow  cold  or  stale,  but  could  always 
preach  on  love,  because  love  was  everything  to 
him  ;  the  man  who  leaned  on  the  heart  of 
Jesus,  and  gathered  up  the  residual  secrets  of 
the  great  Gospel,  and  told  them  out  to  man  ; 
who  lived  in  Ephesus,  and  there  helped  to 
build  up  a  Church  which  had  some  of  the 
brightest  traditions  of  all  that  was  best  in  the 
beginning,  and  then  was  taken  right  away  from 
the  midst  of  his  work,  not  taken  to  heaven,  not 
at  all — he  could  have  gone  there  perhaps  more 
easily — but  taken  right  away  out  into  the  sea 
and  put  down  out  of  sight,  only  a  little  way  out 

10 


146  UNION  WITH  GOD 

of  sight,  of  all  those  whom  he  had  loved  and 
laboured  for,  and  set  there,  apparently,  to  end 
his  days  in  nothingness  ;  he  who  had  had  the 
greatest  fulness  of  Christian  hope  and  Christian 
service — he  says,  **  I  was  in  the  island."  You 
know  what  that  meant,  you  people  who  have 
an  insular  experience  of  loneliness  here  to-day, 
whom  nobody  loves  and  nobody  sympathises 
with,  who  seem  to  have  to  go  to  heaven  on  a 
single  line,  no  one  before,  none  to  follow,  none 
at  the  right  hand  or  the  left.  That  is  all  he 
says  about  his  loneliness  ;  and  a  verse  or  two 
after  he  says,  "  I  was  in  the  Spirit."  That  will 
do ;  for  he  that  is  in  the  Spirit  is  joined  to 
God.  He  is  not  lonely  any  more ;  he  is  not 
separated  any  more  ;  and  his  pains  are  over 
and  his  isolation  is  done,  and  what  he  begins 
with  when  he  says  in  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Apocalypse,  "  I  was  in  the  Spirit,"  is  only  the 
first  sentence  of  what  turns  out  to  be  a  great 
ladder  which  runs  right  up  into  heaven  itself, 
and  where  you  see  not  only  God  at  the  top,  like 
Jacob  did,  but  the  Bridegroom  and  the  Bride, 
the  Bridegroom  with  His  Bride,  the  everlasting 
Sabbath  and  the  unchanging  glory,  where  we. 


"HE  THAT  IS  JOINED    UNTO  THE  LORD''    147 

are  restored  to  all  that  we  may  have  lost,  and 
where  we  find  all  that  we  have  never  on  earth 
attained,   and  where  the  oneness    is   preached 
from  the  throne  that  faith  learned  by  the  Cross  ; 
and   when  we    ask  whether  there   is   anything 
that  can  separate  us  from   Him  whom  we  love, 
the  dear  Apostle,  looking  back  at  us  from  the 
great  reunion  which  he  accomplished  with  the 
Lord  whom  we  love,  and  leaning  again  upon 
the  sacred  Heart  with  a  more  interior  embrace 
than    any    words   of    his   first    fellowship    can 
express, — from  that  great  embrace  of  love  that 
has  gathered  back  the  soul  that  was  its  object 
to   itself,   he  looking  down   upon  us  who  are 
hungering  and  thirsting  after  righteousness,  and 
after  love,  which  is  the  essence  of  righteousness 
— looking  down  upon  us  to-day,  the  hungry  and 
thirsty  people  of  God,  tells  us  that  "  He  that 
is  joined  unto  the  Lord  is  one  Spirit."     "  Come 
hither,"  He  says,   "and  I  will  show  thee  the 
Bride,  the  Lamb's  Wife." 


IX 

GRACE  AND  HEREDITY 


149 


"  The  fathers  have  eajen  sour  grapes,  and  the  children  s  teeth  are  set  on 
edge.  As  I  live,  saith  the  Lord,  ye  shall  not  have  occasion  any  more  to 
use  this  proverb  in  Israel!^ — Ezek.  xviii.  2,  3. 


IX 

GRACE  AND  HEREDITY 

T  DO  not  know  whether  any  one  has  ever 
-*-  taken  the  pains  to  collect  from  the 
Scriptures  the  various  statements  which  they 
contain  of  the  doctrine  of  human  heredity,  and 
to  point  out  the  teaching  of  holy  men  of  old 
upon  the  question  of  transmitted  characteristics, 
which  has  come  so  astonishingly  to  the  front 
in  recent  years.  Certainly  there  are  abundant 
materials  for  such  a  study,  and  they  are  the 
more  valuable  because  of  the  limitation  of  the 
outlook  of  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  Testament 
to  the  fortunes  of  a  particular  people,  so  that 
although  they  do  not  furnish  us  with  a  very 
wide  view  laterally,  being  bounded  by  the 
frontier  of  a  single  province,  and  the  changes 
and  chances  of  a  single  tribe,  yet  in  the  vertical 
direction,  the  up  and  down  of  time,  the  direction 
of   historical    record    and   of   prophetical  hope, 


152  UNION  WITH  GOD 

they  have  a  very  extended  outlook ;  and  it  is 
precisely  in  this  direction  that  the  problems  of 
heredity  will  assert  themselves.  In  fact,  the 
passage  which  we  have  placed  at  the  head  of 
this  chapter  is  one  out  of  many  evidences  that 
the  questions  of  heredity  became  very  serious 
even  to  the  Jews  themselves,  both  in  regard 
to  their  own  national  well-being,  and  as  bearing 
upon  the  Divine  Justice  which  was  supposed 
to  be  involved  in  that  well-being. 

Nor  are  we  to  suppose  that  their  perplexities 
are  very  different  to  our  own ;  the  same 
questions  about  the  sour  grapes  which  the 
fathers  had  eaten  are  in  all  our  minds  to-day, 
even  though  we  are  entirely  out  of  the  line 
of  the  national  well-being  or  ill-fortune  of  the 
Jews.  Our  study  of  the  question  is  perhaps 
a  little  more  scientific  and  perhaps  a  little  less 
religious,  but  that  is  all  the  difference :  the 
actual  problems  involved  will  always  be  both 
scientific  and  religious  ;  and,  as  time  goes  on, 
it  may  very  well  be  the  case  that  the  two  terms 
become  more  and  more  coincident.  We  see 
this  happening  in  many  directions,  as  in  the 
analogies  between  the  Selection  of  Nature  and 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  153 

the  Election  of  Grace,  and  suspect  that  the 
story  of  human  life  needs  to  be  told  from  both 
sides  of  its  web.  So  with  regard  to  the  question 
of  inherited  and  transmitted  ill,  we  shall  probably 
find  that  we  have  justified  God  about  the  same 
time  that  we  have  understood  man,  and  in 
proportion  as  we  understand  him. 

However,  as  we  have  said,  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, being  occupied  with  the  fortunes  of  a 
particular  people,  affords  excellent  material  for 
a  study  of  the  moral  issues  connected  with  the 
laws  of  heredity.  Many  of  its  most  striking 
statements  acquire  quite  a  new  force  when  read 
in  the  light  of  these  laws,  such  as  the  promise 
"  in  thee  and  thy  seed  shall  all  kindreds  of 
the  earth  be  blessed,"  or  the  doctrine  that 
Divine  anger  extends  to  the  third  and  the 
fourth  generation  of  them  that  hate  Him,  and 
Divine  favour  to  thousands  of  them  that  love 
Him  and  keep  His  commandments.  Especially 
is  this  the  case  in  connection  with  those  matters 
in  which  heredity  affected  social  life,  for  we 
must  remember  that  to  the  Hebrew  mind  the 
problems  of  heredity  have  more  to  do  with 
caste  than  they  have  to  do  with  morals ;  even 


154  UNION  WITH  GOD 

the  "third  and  fourth  generation"  to  which 
we  just  alluded  is  not  an  arbitrary  expression 
meant  to  convey  a  rough  idea  of  how  long  God 
can  be  considered  to  be  angry  with  any  given 
family  ;  the  terms  used  are  the  ordinary  and 
recognised  terms  of  guest  friendship  and  tribal 
communion,  they  are  the  limits  at  which  tribal 
rights  are  acquired  or  until  which  they  are 
forfeited  or  withheld. 

It  is  certain  that  no  one  who  read  the 
Scriptures  with  the  view  of  finding  out  what 
they  say  on  the  subject  of  heredity  would  fail 
to  examine  the  passage  which  we  have  tran- 
scribed from  Ezekiel ;  for  here  we  have  the 
dark  side  of  the  question  stated,  the  observed 
scientific  fact  of  inherited  misery,  the  decided 
though  Oriental  protest  of  man  against  an 
apparently  inevitable  past  history  which  is 
continually  rewriting  itself  after  the  proverbial 
manner  of  history,  and  along  with  this  human 
protest  there  is  coupled  an  equally  strong 
counter-protest  on  the  part  of  the  Lord  through 
His  prophet  against  the  irreligious  feelings  to 
which  the  observation  of  the  law  of  heredity 
had  given  occasion.     The  people  to  whom  the 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  155 

prophet  ministered  had  scented  out  this  law 
for  themselves  ;  they  expressed  it  hieroglyphic- 
ally,  if  we  may  so  say,  under  the  term  "  sour 
grapes,"  and  having  begun  to  make  wry  faces 
at  their  fathers,  they  went  on  to  turn  distrustful 
faces  on  their  God.  Sin,  having  conceived, 
had  brought  forth  Suffering,  and  Suffering  was 
preparing  to  become  the  mother  of  Atheism. 
It  was  time  for  a  Divine  intervention. 

It  is  worthy  of  notice  that  the  term  "  sour 
grapes,"  as  it  appears  in  the  prophet,  is  some- 
thing very  different  from  the  proverbial  usage 
which  is  current  amongst  us  from  a  Greek 
source.  In  ordinary  speech  "  sour  grapes " 
stand  for  the  cynical  depreciation  of  good 
things  which  we  are  unable  to  grasp  ;  but  in 
the  Scriptures  they  stand  for  bad  things  which 
we  are  incompetent  to  elude.  The  difference 
between  the  proverb  in  yEsop  and  the  proverb 
in  Ezekiel  is  as  wide  as  the  gulf  which  separates 
the  thought  of  a  human  disappointment  from 
the  thought  of  the  failure  of  the  Creator  Him- 
self, and  the  variation  in  the  size  of  the  problem 
treated  makes  a  corresponding  variation  in  the 
treatment  ;  the    sage    on    the    one    hand   stops 


156  UNION  WITH  GOD 

short  with  being  witty,  the  prophet  is  nothing 
unless  he  is  theological.  He  is  dealing  with 
atheism,  not  with  mere  discontent ;  his  burden 
is  not  to  soothe  wounded  pride,  but  to  "justify 
the  ways  of  God  to  men"  ;  and  who  ever  had 
this  service  like  the  old  Hebrew  seers  ? 

Now,  without  stopping  to  inquire  what  were 
the  special  political  and  social  troubles  which 
provoked  the  Hebrew  complaint  of  God's  deal- 
ings (whether  it  be  the  results  of  wars  which 
the  people  had  not  made,  the  hardships  of 
captivity  which  they  had  not  brought  upon 
themselves,  or  whatever  it  may  be),  let  us  take 
the  complaint  with  the  reply,  and  say  of  the 
general  truths  that  here  appear  in  particular 
instances  : — 

(i)  The  Doctrine  of  Heredity  is  the  greatest 
of  Scientific  Discoveries. 

(2)  The  Doctrine  of  Grace  is  the  greatest 
of  Catholic  Doctrines. 

We  couple  the  scientific  discovery  with  the 
religious  discovery ;  there  is  no  necessary 
opposition  between  them,  for  Scientific  truth 
and  Catholic  doctrine  are  near  neighbours ;  all 
that  is  Scientific  will  one  day  be  Catholic,  and 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY 


157 


conversely.  The  observation  of  laws  of  heredity 
is  not  inconsistent  with  the  Doctrine  of  Divine 
Grace.  Concerning  this  latter  doctrine,  indeed, 
the  statement  we  have  made  is  not  our  own, 
but  that  of  the  late  M.  Renan.  It  often 
happens  that  we  learn  from  our  enemies  ;  and 
especially  in  the  estimating  of  relative  magni- 
tudes the  outsider  will  be  found  the  best  judge 
of  proportion.  Consequently  we  accept  M. 
Renan's  statement  that  the  Doctrine  of  Grace 
is  the  greatest  of  Catholic  doctrines,  and  set 
it  side  by  side  with  the  greatest  thing  that 
Science  can  say  as  to  our  birth  and  destiny. 
Every  kind  of  analysis  and  every  test  of  ex- 
perience will  verify  the  accuracy  of  M.  Renan's 
dictum.  So  that  on  the  one  hand  we  have  a 
statement  to  the  effect  that  by  the  perpetuation 
of  my  parents  I  am  what  I  am,  and  on  the 
other  the  doctrine  that  by  the  grace  of  God 
I  am  what  I  am.  And  these  two  statements 
are  not  contradictory  nor  mutually  exclusive. 

How  wonderfully  the  facts  and  laws  of 
heredity  are  coming  to  light  in  all  current 
discussions  with  regard  to  the  body  and  the 
mind  '     We  are  all  of  us  meeting  with  our  past 


158  UNION  WITH  GOD 

in  a  thousand  new  and  unexpected  ways  :  it 
looks  out  upon  us  everywhere  ;  where  it  used 
to  be  a  mere  matter  of  hair  or  eyes  or  speech, 
it  is  now  in  every  curve  of  the  body  and  in 
every  mood  of  the  mind.  Not  merely  in  times 
of  special  perplexity  or  intricate  inquiry  do  we 
say  to  our  friends — 

"  Your  face,  my  thane,  is  like  a  book  where  men 
May  read  strange  matters  " ; 

but  under  all  circumstances  we  are  learning  to 
find  in  their  faces  (and  in  our  face  also  when 
seen  from  the  reflecting  surface  of  the  world  we 
live  in)  an  open  book,  and  that  not  a  single 
volume,  but  a  whole  encyclopaedia — a  long  row 
of  volumes  of  historical  information. 

Family  likeness  is  everywhere ;  we  began 
perhaps  by  searching  for  it  in  the  newly  living 
or  recently  dead,  after  the  manner  described  in 
the  lines — 

"  As  sometimes  in  a  dead  man's  face. 
To  those  who  watch  it,  more  and  more 
A  Ukeness  unobserved  before 
Comes  out  to  some  one  of  his  race." 

And  we  are  learning  now  to   record  what  we 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  159 

see,  not  sometimes  in  a  dead  man's  face,  but 
every  day  in  the  faces  of  living  men.  Nor  is 
it  a  single  portrait  that  we  recover,  or  the  two 
or  three  immediate  ancestors  ;  but  the  resem- 
blances make  up  a  gallery  of  historical  figures. 
They  are  not  limited  to  the  good  or  the  great, 
for  there  are  faces  amongst  them  which  we 
would  gladly  and  for  ever  turn  to  the  wall  if  we 
could.  To  put  it  in  plain  English,  we  all  of 
us  have  not  merely  a  long  ancestry,  but  in  part 
a  criminal  ancestry.  The  verification  of  that 
statement  lies  to  some  extent  in  the  thoughts 
and  intents  of  our  own  hearts.  Science  has 
joined  hands  with  Christianity  on  the  question 
of  original  sin,  and  the  once  popular  doctrine 
of  the  soul  as  a  clean  white  paper  is  gone  for 
ever.  It  is  doubtful  whether  we  can  any  longer 
even  take  consolation  in  the  thought  that  at 
any  time  in  the  world's  history  the  soul's  paper 
was  white.  If  it  ever  were  so,  it  was  so  far 
back  that  it  could  scarcely  be  identified  as 
a  soul  ;  individuality  would  have  disappeared 
before  purity  was  discovered. 

It  is  no  doubt  a  great  gain  to  have  definitely 
rid  ourselves  of  the  absurd  and  impossible  idea 


i6o  UNION  WITH  GOD 

that  children  are  born  good,  and  to  have 
abandoned  the  idea  that  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  starting  fair  in  the  race  of  life.  It  is  one  of 
the  proofs  that  may  be  given  of  a  statement 
made  a  little  further  back  that  the  terms 
Scientific  and  Catholic  tend  to  coincidence. 
But  it  does  not  diminish  the  seriousness  of  the 
problem  ;  for  the  more  clearly  the  conditions 
and  laws  of  heredity  are  brought  to  light,  the 
more  hopeless  are  we  likely  to  become  both 
as  regards  our  own  moral  welfare  and  as 
regards  the  character  of  God,  which  is  involved 
in  that  moral  welfare.  It  is  natural,  and  not 
altogether  unreasonable,  to  be  discouraged 
when  we  find  ourselves  under  the  influence 
of  a  multitude  of  temptations  of  which  the 
greater  part  belong  to  our  ancestors,  and  per- 
petuating in  innumerable  habits  the  manners 
of  life  which  they  ought  to  have  unlearned 
for  us. 

And  small  is  the  consolation  which  the  man 
whose  teeth  are  set  on  edge  will  take  from 
being  told  that  the  grapes  are  not  so  sour  as 
they  used  to  be.  We  may  optimistically  en- 
courage him  to  "  move  upward,  working  out  the 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  i6i 

beast,  and  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die,"  and  in 
some  respects  this  is  not  unlike  the  Scripture 
advice  to  mortify  our  members  which  are  on  the 
earth  ;  but  if  the  man  find  not  merely  the  ape 
and  the  tiger,  but  a  whole  menagerie  of  wild 
animals  gathered  under  his  own  roof,  he  will 
suspect  that,  though  they  sometimes  sleep,  they 
show  no  signs  of  dying.  While  he  lives,  they 
live  ;  for  they  are  a  part  of  himself.  Of  these 
inherited  ills  he  will  say  what  Faber  says  of 
self-life  generally — 

"But  I  can  scarcely  hope,  I  fear,  to  kill  thee, 
Save  in  the  act  of  dying." 

Nor  even  here,  to  a  man  who  believes  in  a 
future  life,  is  the  consolation  effectual  ;  for  even 
a  life  to  come  is  not  exempt  from  the  influence 
of  acquired  characteristics.  We  may  learn  to 
hate  on  one  continent,  and  carry  our  hatred 
with  us  when  we  emigrate  to  another.  We 
are  under  a  load  of  acquired  characteristics  in 
this  life  ;  and  who  shall  say  we  may  not  groan 
under  the  burden  of  them  in  another  ?  For 
although  the  corruptible  body  presseth  down 
the  soul,  it  is  even  more  true  that  the  corrupted 

II 


1 62  UNION  WITH  GOD 

and  corruptible  soul  is  a  burden  to  herself.  Such 
a  burden  may  subsist  even  in  a  disembodied 
condition. 

It  is  precisely  the  painfulness  of  this  question 
of  inherited  ill  that  makes  the  acceptableness  of 
the  doctrine  of  Divine  Grace.  There  must  be 
some  way  of  condemning  heredity  in  the  flesh, 
in  order  that  we  may  walk  at  large  in  the  spirit. 
It  is  the  sense  of  the  prevalence  of  hereditary 
evil  that  makes  us  apprehend  the  greatness  of 
the  Catholic  doctrine  of  Grace  and  the  glory 
of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  For  Grace  is 
the  antidote  of  Heredity,  and  can  deal  with  a 
thousand  years  as  easily  as  with  a  single  day — 
can  say  of  sin  that  the  wind  shall  pass  over  it 
and  it  shall  be  gone,  and  the  place  thereof  shall 
know  it  no  more.  It  can  take  the  proverb  of 
"  sour  grapes  "  out  of  our  lips,  because  we  shall 
have  no  more  occasion  to  use  it  in  Israel.  It 
can  provide  that  the  man  who  stole  shall  steal 
no  more,  not  merely  by  reiterating  the  com- 
mands of  the  Decalogue  against  theft,  but  by 
making  him  partaker  of  the  life  that  does  not 
steal.  It  can  deal  with  inherited  tendency  as 
easily    as    with    actual    sin — can    make    hatred 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  163 

cease  by  excess  of  love,  and  falsity  shrivel  before 
excess  of  truth. 

The  proverb  about  the  sour  grapes  will  always 
be  used  in  Israel  until  we  understand  the  Grace 
of  God  in  Jesus  Christ  well  enough  to  embrace 
it  absolutely  in  its  fulness  as  the  sufficient 
medicine  against  heredity  ;  and  I  have  long 
thought  that  if  we  have  not  a  gospel  against 
heredity,  it  is  very  doubtful  zvhether  we  have 
any  gospel  at  all. 

Now  in  studying  the  sweet  grapes,  which 
antidote  the  sour,  we  begin  by  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  Grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  as 
it  existed  in  Himself  personally.  It  is  a  fact 
which  is  often  lost  sight  of,  that  our  Lord  was 
like  ourselves  in  the  matter  of  having  a  human 
heredity ;  and  we  cannot  limit  this  heredity  to 
the  fact  that  His  eyes  were,  according  to  the 
old  legend,  of  the  same  colour  as  His  mother's  ; 
there  must  have  been  other  things  which  were 
also  of  the  same  colour.  The  Scriptures  them- 
selves teach  us  to  study  the  genealogy  of  Jesus, 
by  declaring  Him  to  be  of  David's  race,  and 
affirming  Him  to  be  sprung  out  of  Judah. 
And  although  we   are   not  able  to   distinguish 


1 64  UNION  WITH  GOD 

clearly    at    what    point    the    actual   genealogy 
diverges  from  the  two  Joseph-genealogies  given 
in  Matthew  and  in  Luke,  we  have  every  reason 
to  believe  that  the  line  of  the  blessed  Virgin's 
past  history  runs  back  upon  a  course  not  very 
different  to   those  which   are   supposed   in  the 
Gospels.      In    other    words,    our    Lord   had    a 
human    line    of    descent    which    was,    in    all 
probability,  similar  in  its  features  to  the  Book 
of  Generations  of  the  first  chapter  of  Matthew. 
The  Scripture  expresses  this  fact  in  the  words, 
"  Forasmuch   as   the  children  are  partakers  of 
flesh  and  blood.  He  also  Himself  took  part  of 
the  same."     But  while  every  one  accepts  this 
statement,  it  is  but  seldom  that  we  appreciate 
what  it  means  to  be  partaker  of  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  the  children.     Two  tremendous  facts 
start  up  before  our  mind  :  the  first  is  that  our 
Lord  was  like  ourselves  in  the  possession  of 
criminal  ancestry  ;    the  second  is  that,  though 
His  ancestors  had  eaten  sour  grapes.  His  teeth 
were  not  set  on  edge  with  them.     For  both  of 
these    statements — the   first    of    which    startles 
from  the  Catholic  side  our  sense  of  reverence 
and  arouses   a   feeling   of  something   impious 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  165 

having  been  spoken,  and  the  second  which  from 
the  Scientific  side  astonishes  us  by  affirming 
that  an  unparalleled  miracle  has  been  wrought 
— there  is  abundant  Scriptural  evidence. 

We  are  definitely  taught  to  regard  our  Lord 
as  sprung  from  a  sinful  ancestry  :  apart  from 
the  genealogies  it  would  be  sufficient  to  repeat 
only  the  names  David  and  Judah  ;  and  with  the 
genealogies  a  little  examination  seems  to  show 
that  there  is  an  emphasis  on  deadly  sin  in  the 
record.  But  even  if  no  mortal  sins  had  been 
alluded  to,  every  step  in  the  genealogies  (what- 
ever the  step  was)  is  the  record  of  a  life 
of  a  sinful  man  who  tended  to  transmit  his 
own  acquired  characteristics  and  to  perpetuate 
his  own  inherited  tendencies.  With  supreme 
reverence,  and  with  the  overflowing  of  grateful 
love,  we  are  entitled  to  say  that  the  statement 
that  our  Lord  partook  of  the  flesh  and  blood 
of  the  children  reduces  His  heredity  and  ours 
in  some  sense  to  a  common  classification.  But 
we  are  further  definitely  taught  that  He  was 
without  sin,  that  He  knew  no  sin,  that  guile 
was  not  found  in  His  mouth,  that  He  was 
without    blemish    and   without    spot.     So  that. 


1 66  UNION  WITH  GOD 

without  entering  into  any  perplexing  questions 
as  to  the  nature  of  Christ's  sinlessness,  we  can 
see  that  He  is  in  His  own  person  the  leading 
proof  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy  that  the 
influence  of  the  sour  grapes  should  not  be 
eternal  in  Israel.  I  will  not  attempt  to  analyse 
how  far  this  miracle  is  to  be  referred  to  the 
Incarnation  and  how  far  to  the  Obedience  of 
Christ ;  it  is  suf^cient  for  us  to  believe  that 
by  the  Incarnation  and  the  Obedience  (and  the 
Obedience  according  to  the  Scripture  culminates 
in  the  Cross)  the  succession  of  sin  in  a  direct 
line  was  made  to  cease  :  in  His  own  person 
Grace  reigned  through  righteousness  unto  glory. 
But  by  this  time  we  are  getting  away  from  the 
sour  grapes  ourselves  and  beginning  to  gather 
sweet  grapes.  For  this  doctrine  of  Grace,  this 
greatest  of  Catholic  doctrines,  teaches  us  not  to 
regard  our  Lord  as  a  childless  man,  but  as  One 
who  stands  in  relation  with  ourselves  so  that 
we  may  repeat  His  life.  Behold,  He  says,  I  and 
the  children  whom  God  has  given  Me. 

If  He  took  heredity,  it  is  also  true  that  He 
gives  us  His.  We  find  out  what  vine  the 
sweet  grapes  grow  on,  and  are  branches  of  it. 


GRACE  AND  HEREDITY  167 

A  communication  of  the  Divine  nature  remedies 
our  long  line  of  ills,  and  the  grace  which  was 
in  Him  appears  as  saving  grace  and  sanctifying 
grace  in  ourselves.  We  begin  to  act  as  if  our 
own  genealogy  commenced  with  the  words 
"  which  was  the  Son  of  God  "  ;  and  when  we 
thus  act  the  genealogy  turns  out  to  be  true,  for 
we  are  all  the  children  of  God  by  faith  in  Christ 
Jesus. 


X 

A    CORN  OF  WHEAT 


169 


X 

A    CORN  OF  WHEAT 

THE  teaching  of  the  Bible  is  largely  coloured 
by  figures  borrowed  from  a  civilisation  so 
much  more  elementary  than  our  own  that  we 
are  obliged  sometimes  to  stop  and  ask  our- 
selves the  question  whether,  if  Christ  and  His 
Apostles  were  to  reappear  in  the  twentieth 
century,  they  would  talk  in  the  same  way  as 
they  did  in  the  first.  Would  their  thought  be 
as  exquisitely  simple,  and  their  language  so 
charmingly  agricultural  and  piscatorial,  as  we 
find  in  the  Galilean  story  ?  or  should  we  find, 
instead  of  the  language  of  the  farm  and  the 
vineyard,  allusions  to  railway-trains  and  to 
machine-shops,  to  telephones  and  torpedoes  ? 
For  we  find  that  to-day,  even  in  making  the 
simplest  religious  and  moral  statements,  the 
modern  teacher  is  affected  by  the  increasing 
complexity   of  the   life   around    him,    and    his 


172  UNION  WITH  GOD 

speech  is  coloured  by  the  enterprise,  the  in- 
dustrial developments,  and  the  speculations  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  To  take  the  simplest 
possible  case  :  the  late  Prof.  Jowett  told  us  that 
the  value  of  a  religious  system  consists  in  the 
ethical  dividend  that  it  pays — an  elementary 
truth,  and  in  a  very  modern  habiliment ;  the 
people  of  old  time  would  have  said  with  Paul, 
"  What  fruit  had  ye  ?"  or  with  the  Lord  would 
have  announced  that  "  every  tree  which  bringeth 
not  forth  good  fruit  would  be  hewn  down  and 
burned  up."  But  there  is  a  change  in  the 
form  of  expression,  if  we  correct  the  evangelical 
language  and  say  that  every  company  which 
does  not  pay  a  dividend  will  be  wound  up  or 
pass  into  the  hands  of  a  receiver ! 

We  admit  freely  that  our  Lord,  if  He  preached 
in  our  day,  might  use  language  borrowed  largely 
from  our  time  ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  the 
terms  used  would  be  any  more  forcible  than 
the  expressions  which  came  out  of  the  very 
heart  of  nature  as  well  as  out  of  the  inmost 
thought  of  God.  Should  we  believe  Him  any 
more  if  He  said,  "  Behold,  an  investor  went 
forth  to  invest,"  instead  of  "  Behold,  a  sower 


A    CORN  OF   WHEAT  173 

went  forth  to  sow  "  ?  Would  the  illustration 
probably  be  longer-lived  because  it  belonged 
to  later  days  ?  To  assume  that  would  be  to 
predict  for  our  industrial  and  commercial  life 
a  permanence  which  is  generally  supposed  not 
to  be  its  leading  characteristic.  And  I  think 
we  may  be  glad  that  the  Bible  is  agriculturally 
rather  than  financially  or  mechanically  illustrated, 
for  there  is  a  permanence  about  the  processes 
of  nature  which  makes  illustrations,  such  as  our 
Lord  used,  very  suitable  to  accompany  truths 
which  do  not  pass  away. 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  any  one  to  notice 
what  a  wide  range  Christ's  teaching  could  take 
with  the  aid  of  a  single  illustration  ?  How 
much  could  He  tell  of  the  mysteries  of  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven  over  a  fishing-net,  or  a 
farm-yard,  or  one  solitary  ear  of  corn  or  de- 
tached grain  of  wheat !  We  venture  to  say 
that  the  whole  of  Christ's  most  salient  teaching 
could  be  done  with  a  text  plucked  at  random 
in  a  corn-field.  Let  us  try  and  see  some  of  the 
ways  in  which  the  statement  just  made  can  be 
verified. 

We  will  begin  with  the  lowest  of  the  lessons 


174  UNION  WITH  GOD 

in  the  Christian  scale — viz.,  the  right  to  acquire 
and  the  duty  to  defend  our  personal  and  re- 
ligious liberty.  We  trace  all  our  good  to  Jesus 
Christ,  whenever  we  see  a  rightly  ordered  state 
or  look  upon  a  well-saved  soul.  If  Christ  had 
not  promulgated  our  liberties  in  His  new  charter, 
if  priestcraft  had  not  come  under  His  lash,  and 
the  slave  had  not  found  the  sealed  orders  of 
his  emancipation  amongst  Christ's  papers,  we 
should  have  to  answer  John's  question,  "Are 
we  to  look  for  another  ? "  in  the  affirmative. 
Christ  cannot  be  all  and  in  all  until  there  is 
neither  bond  nor  free.  Nor  have  we  the  right 
to  glory  over  the  best  steps  of  national  pro- 
gress, and  remain  Christians  when  we  thus  exult, 
unless  we  count  Christ  as  the  seed-corn  of  our 
harvest.  It  is  perfectly  in  accordance  with 
New  Testament  teaching  to  define  liberty  as 
the  right  to  act  without  the  intervention  of  a 
ruler  and  to  think  without  the  intervention  of 
a  priest.  These  ideas  are  the  current  coin  of 
the  kingdom,  as  well  as  the  base  metal  of  the 
agitator. 

Now  when  our  Lord  would  teach  us  these 
things.  He  went  through  the  corn-fields  on  the 


A    CORN'  OF  WHEA2  175 

Sabbath,  and  His  disciples  plucked  and  ate. 
They  did  not  know  that  they  were  plucking 
and  eating  emancipation,  that  the  rubbing  of 
their  hands  was  the  type  of  the  whole  friction 
of  progress  ;  but  Christ  knew  it.  And  when 
the  Pharisees  would  stop  the  impromptu  break- 
fast, and  put  precedent  and  piety  to  the  front, 
and  proved  to  demonstration,  no  doubt,  that  it 
was  a  lesser  kind  of  threshing  forbidden  on 
the  holy  day.  He  shook  the  ears  of  corn  in 
their  faces,  and  said  that  He  was  the  Lord  of 
the  Sabbath.  I  wonder  whether  once  in  the 
thousand  times  when  we  decorate  our  churches 
with  wheat-ears  for  harvest  festivals  we  have 
any  thought  in  our  minds  of  the  kind  of  sermon 
Christ  preached  off  the  simple  texts  which  make 
our  show  ?  or  whether  we  are  so  limited  in  our 
range  of  religious  vision  as  not  to  know  that 
the  harvest  is  not  exclusively  the  end  of  the 
world,  nor  those  that  reap  it  merely  the  angels  ? 
So  much  then  may  be  said  with  regard  to  the 
priceless  privileges  of  an  advancing  Christian 
civilisation  from  the  text,  "He  went  through 
the  corn-fields  on  the  Sabbath." 

Turn  now  to  the  spiritual  life,  and  let  us  fly 


176  UNION  WITH  GOD 

higher.  Our  consecration  to  God  was  taught 
us  by  Jesus  Christ  over  a  single  grain  of  seed- 
corn  ;  the  law  of  death  to  the  self-life  and  of  life 
in  the  spirit  is  written  across  the  law  of  natural 
disintegration  and  reintegration  of  the  corn  of 
wheat  that  falls  into  the  ground.  To  make  a 
more  exact  statement,  we  ought  to  say,  not  the 
law  of  our  consecration  to  God,  but  the  law  of 
His  consecration.  For  the  corn  of  wheat  from 
which  He  preached  was  in  the  first  instance 
His  own  life,  and  not  ours.  "  Except  a  corn 
of  wheat  fall  into  the  ground  and  die,  it  abideth 
alone  :  if  it  die,  it  bringeth  forth  much  fruit." 
And  the  context  shows  that,  in  the  first  instance, 
He  was  speaking  of  His  own  actual  death,  and 
not  merely  of  the  mystical  surrender  of  His 
will  or  of  ours,  but  of  the  whole  story  of  which 
the  Incarnation  is  the  prologue  and  the  Resur- 
rection the  conclusion.  Now  it  is  true  that  our 
spiritual  history  is  involved  in  that  story,  for  to 
be  a  Christian  is  to  have  died  with  Christ  and 
to  be  raised  with  Him  ;  but  the  lesson  loses 
much  of  its  force  if  we  leave  out  the  words 
"  with  Christ  "  and  "  with  Him."  For  what 
special  wonder  is  it  if  we  acknowledge  our  own 


A    CORN  OF   WHEAT  177 

limitations  and  confess  our  own  nothingness  ? 
The  propulsion  to  duty  lies  in  the  appreciation 
of  Christ,  not  in  the  depreciation  of  ourselves  ; 
in  the  knowledge  of  heavenly  love,  not  in  the 
attainment  of  hatred  of  personal  selfishness. 
And  one  of  the  things  that  move  our  affection 
Christwards  is  His  unspeakable  humility,  and 
we  shall  not  easily  find  a  better  illustration  of 
the  truth  that  He  was  meek  and  lowly  in  heart 
than  In  the  fact  of  His  comparing  His  life  to 
a  single  corn  of  wheat,  which  any  one  might 
despise  and  nobody  would  miss.  Such  language 
is  like  a  renewal  of  the  Incarnation. 

If  we  appreciate  Christ  when  He  thus  dis- 
courses over  His  own  body,  and  when  He  thus 
epitomises  His  own  life,  we  ought  not  to  find 
it  so  difificult  to  take  the  place  of  consecration 
ourselves,  and  to  be  planted  with  Him  in  the 
likeness  of  His  death. 

From  the  very  same  text  He  taught  us  the 
doctrine  of  our  sanctification,  by  means  of  wheat 
that  was  thoroughly  threshed  and  corn  that  was 
gathered  in  from  a  floor  that  was  thoroughly 
purged.  We  observe  that  here  He  does  not 
call   Himself  the  corn,  but   the  thresher  ;    the 

12 


178  UNION  WITH  GOD 

inference  is  that,  while  it  was  appropriate  to 
see  in  Him  the  seed-corn  of  God,  it  was 
not  appropriate  to  think  of  Him  as  a  grain  of 
wheat  still  in  the  chaff,  when  the  lesson  clearly 
is  that  the  chaff  stands  for  what  is  worthless 
and  actually  evil.  For  this  reason  He  appears 
as  the  thresher,  and  not  as  the  corn  ;  and  we 
are  entitled  to  interpret  all  the  imagery  of  the 
threshing-floor  of  ourselves  and  of  the  Church. 
God  did  not  say  concerning  Christ,  "  I  will 
thoroughly  purge,"  but  it  was  said  of  His 
people  ;  the  cleansing  of  the  Vine  is  in  the 
branches.  But  this  really  simplifies  matters  for 
us  very  much,  because  we  are  in  no  danger 
of  wrongly  transferring  to  ourselves  a  work  of 
grace  which  might  refer  to  Him,  or  to  ourselves 
only  in  an  ideal  manner  in  Him.  Whatever 
Pentecostal  grace  may  be,  or  Pentecostal  purity, 
it  is  all  ours  ;  nor  need  we  have  the  slightest 
fear  or  suspicion  that  we  shall  detract  anything 
from  the  glory  of  Christ  by  being  as  pure  as 
He  intends  to  make  us.  And  personally  it  is 
a  matter  of  great  comfort  to  me  that  this 
thought  of  a  God-wrought  purity  is  put  in  the 
very  forefront   ot    the  Gospel  ;   so  that  if  we 


A    CORN  OF  WHEAT  179 

had  nothing  more  than  a  leaf  or  two  at  the 
beginning  of  Matthew,  or  if  we  had  only  so 
much  of  John  the  Baptist's  sermons  as  would 
make  mere  headlines  for  newspapers,  we  should 
know  what  it  was  that  God  was  designing  for 
us,  and  why  Christ  was  come  ;  and  we  should 
not  err,  we  cannot  err,  in  pushing  to  the  front 
of  our  own  religious  thinking  those  very  thoughts 
which  belong  to  the  beginning  of  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

Much  more  might  be  said  on  the  same  sub- 
ject, and  in  connection  with  it.  It  is  probable 
that  all  the  deepest  teaching  of  the  Bible,  both 
of  the  Old  and  of  the  New  Testaments,  is 
characterised  by  the  same  leaning  on  the 
elementary  facts  and  processes  of  nature.  The 
graces  of  the  redeemed  life  can  all  be  ex- 
pressed in  the  same  alphabet;  "every  virtue 
we  possess,  and  every  conflict  won,"  can  be  re- 
corded in  these  simple  forms  of  speech.  What 
a  magnificent  praise  of  God  behind  the  cloud 
and  within  the  veil  is  contained,  for  instance,  in 
that  last  chapter  of  Habakkuk  !  One  wonders 
why  it  was  never  pushed  back  from  the 
Prophets  into  a  leading   place  in  the   Psalms. 


i8o  UNION  WITH  GOD 

Indeed  it  was  so  pushed  back  in  the  Greek 
Church,  for  they  made  it  one  of  the  nine  can- 
ticles which  they  commonly  write  at  the  end  of 
the  Psalter.  When  we  come  to  examine  the 
terms  of  this  beautiful  song  in  the  night,  the 
most  perfect  expression  of  resignation  to  God 
and  of  deliverance  from  disappointment,  we 
find  the  writer  teaching  us  from  fig  trees  that 
have  not  blossomed,  and  from  olive  trees  whose 
labour  has  failed.  We  should  not  learn  it  any 
quicker  if  it  had  been  expressed  in  the  language 
of  Consols  or  of  Argentine  Securities.  These 
simple  teachings  of  farm  and  field  knock  con- 
tinually at  the  doors  of  our  own  blessedness, 
with  intent  that  we  may  enter  therein  and  find 
our  home  in  the  will  of  God,  and  our  permanent 
lodging  under  the  shadow  of  the  Almighty. 


XI 

THE  HOLY  PA2IENCE 


"  My  sou  I,  wait  thou  only  upon  God ; 
For  my  expectation  is  fro7n  IIi?n." 

Psalm  Ixii.  5. 


182 


XI 

THE  HOLY  PATIENCE 

AMONGST  the  virtues  and  graces  which 
go  to  make  up  the  saintly  character,  it 
is  certain  that  Patience  occupies  a  leading 
position,  being,  in  its  highest  form  (for  we 
are  not  speaking  of  elementary  attainments),  a 
virtue  so  God-honouring  and  God-justifying, 
that  it  is  set  amongst  the  other  ethical  cha- 
racteristics of  the  redeemed  man  as  a  chief 
corner-stone,  being  in  the  builded  temple  of 
the  Christian  life  what  Christ  is  in  the  temple 
of  redeemed  humanity. 

If  we  were  to  be  told  that  a  book  was 
shortly  to  appear,  in  which,  from  the  standpoint 
of  freshly  acquired  facts  or  more  accurately 
combined  doctrines,  a  perfect  vindication  of 
God's  ways  to  men  would  be  for  the  first  time 
presented,  and  we  were  left  to  speculate  about 

the  character  of  the  book  in  the  interval  between 

183 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


the  announcement  of  the  book  and  its  publica- 
tion, how  many  things  would  immediately  be 
suggested  to  our  mind  !  One  of  the  first  would 
be  that  this  was  the  book  which  all  the  best 
men  had  been  wishing  to  write  :  for  who  is 
there  that  knows  God  at  all  that  is  unconcerned 
with  the  problem  that  Milton  had  in  hand 
when  he  desired — 

"  That  to  the  height  of  this  great  argument 
I  may  assert  eternal  Providence 
And  justify  tlie  ways  of  God  to  men  "  ? 

If  this  is  the  end  and  aim  of  poetry,  every 
poet  is  a  Christian,  and  every  Christian,  more 
or  less,  a  poet.  We  hold,  on  this  question,  the 
faith  and  morals  of  Milton.  And  we  have  all 
of  us  the  inward  conviction  that,  forming,  as 
we  do,  fragments  of  a  world  in  which,  from 
the  microcosm  to  the  macrocosm,  the  denial  of 
God  appears  along  with  the  affirmation  of  His 
being  and  of  His  love,  and  in  which  unbelief  is 
always  dogging  the  pioneer  footsteps  of  Faith, 
there  is  none  of  us  that  is  exempt  from  the 
study  of  the  Divine  Vindication.  For  God 
cannot  be  in  the  highest  degree  glorified  until 
He  is  justified  ;  and  we  should  therefore  feel 


THE  HOLY  PATIENCE  185 

that,  when  the  book  of  the  Divine  Justification 
is  open  to  readers,  the  readers  will  be  all  that 
worthily  bear  the  name  of  Believers.  We 
should  all  read  this  book,  at  all  events,  the 
moment  that  it  appears. 

Another  thought  that  would  rise  to  our 
minds  would  be  that  it  could  hardly  be  a  short 
book  that  was  promised.  It  will  be  more 
interesting  than  the  best  novel  ever  written, 
yet  we  hardly  expect  it  to  come  within  the 
scope  of  three  volumes.  Our  own  perplexities 
require  at  least  a  page  ;  and  then  there  are 
our  neighbours'  troubles  too,  which  have  reacted 
upon  the  affirmation  of  God  in  the  world,  and 
made  it  more  like  a  changing  Yea-nay  than  the 
everlasting  Yea.  And  even  if  we  have  never 
sinned  nor  charged  God  with  folly,  there  must 
be  a  vindication  of  our  Faith,  as  well  as  a 
condemnation  of  any  possible  or  actual  Unfaith, 
in  the  new  book.  Certainly  it  will  be  a  large 
book,  when  the  index  shows  our  names  and 
the  names  of  those  we  know  and  love,  along 
with  the  other  factors  that  make  up  the  travail 
of  the  world. 

We  should  further  consider  that,  inasmuch  as 


1 86  UNION  WITH  GOD 

it  is  by  the  Church  that  the  manifold  wisdom 
of  God  is  to  be  made  known,  the  justification 
of  God's  ways  will  especially  be  brought  out 
by  throwing  fresh  light  upon  the  great  historical 
facts  upon  which  the  Christian  religion  reposes, 
and  upon  the  great  experiences,  personal  and 
collective,  which  men  have  had  of  the  Grace  of 
God  in  this  life.  It  will  not  be  a  mere  book 
of  anthems  arranged  for  the  instruments  of 
another  world.  Every  word  of  it  would  indeed 
serve  for  the  libretto  of  an  oratorio,  and  a  good 
part  of  it  we  shall  sing,  and  at  sight  too,  with 
an  accompaniment  upon  our  own  strings.  But 
it  will  be  written  in  plain  prose,  and  the 
librarian  will  catalogue  it  as  Church  History. 

And  the  author's  name — what  can  it  be  other 
than  Patience  ?  For,  unless  God  write  the 
book  Himself,  to  which  of  the  powers  or 
virtues,  celestial  or  terrestrial,  could  it  be 
given,  except  only  to  this  handmaid  of  the 
Lord,  who  can  say  of  all  the  story  of  the 
Church  of  God — 

"  et  quorum  pars  magna  fui "  ; 

whose  ceaseless  occupation  it  has  been  to  wait 


THE  HOLY  PATIENCE  187 

for  the  consolation  of  Israel  ;  who  first  made 
hope  to  be  vocal  in  the  soul  of  Isaiah,  who 
fasted  and  prayed  with  Anna  in  her  long 
widowhood,  who  was  at  the  cross  with  the 
Blessed  Mother,  and  at  the  grave  with  the 
Magdalene ;  who  hired  the  room  for  the  great 
Pentecostal  Meeting,  and  sang  "  How  long,  O 
Lord,  how  long  "  under  the  great  altar  of  the 
martyr  sacrifices  ?  She  it  is  who  will  write  the 
book  (for  it  is  Patience  that  justifies  God),  and 
some  of  the  proof-sheets  are  already  passing 
through  the  press. 

But,  leaving  allegory  and  similitude,  let  us 
say  in  plain  English  that  a  God-inspired  Ex- 
pectation, a  Holy  Patience,  has  always  been 
the  mark  of  the  true  believer,  at  the  most 
critical  periods  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
and  of  the  individual  ;  and  we  propose  to  point 
out  some  of  the  ways  in  which  this  grace  has 
been  demonstrated  to  be  the  corner-stone  of 
the  Worship  of  God.  We  may  show  this,  in 
the  first  instance,  by  illustrations  drawn  from 
the  leading  dispensations  of  the  Grace  of  God 
to  men,  and  we  may  confirm  it  from  the  obser- 
vation of  individual  leadings  and  visitations,  in 


UNION  WITH  GOD 


accordance  with  the  general  law  that  all  dis- 
pensational  experience  of  the  Church  becomes 
the  individual  experience  of  the  child  of  God. 

In  the  first  place,  then,  remark  that  before 
the  First  Advent  God  had  a  waiting  people 
whose  faith  was  focussed  upon  the  promises  of 
the  Advent.  That  such  a  band  of  waiting 
people  really  existed  is  sufficiently  clear  from 
hints  that  are  let  fall  in  the  story  of  Simeon 
and  Anna.  The  definition  of  Simeon  as  one 
who  was  expectant  of  the  Comfort  of  Israel, 
and  the  allusion  to  the  audiences  of  the 
prophetess  Anna  as  being  composed  of  those 
who  were  expectant  of  the  redemption  of 
Jerusalem,  are  sufficient  intimations  of  the 
existence  of  an  adventist  movement  in  Jerusalem. 
Indeed,  the  terms  are  practically  equivalent  in 
the  two  passages  quoted  (Luke  i.  25,  38).  But 
if  we  equate  "  expectant  of  the  consolation  of 
Israel  "  with  "  expectant  of  the  redemption  of 
(or  in)  Jerusalem,"  we  have  practically  re- 
covered the  formula  of  the  religious  movement 
to  which  Simeon  and  Anna  and  their  friends 
belonged.  And  the  leading  virtue  which  is 
involved  in   this  spiritual    movement,   without 


THE  HOLY  PATIENCE 


which   the  movement   itself  could  not  exist,  is 
evidently  the  Holy  Patience. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  nucleus  of 
Christianity,  the  Church  before  the  Christ, 
detached  from  the  average  Judaism  of  the  day 
by  the  fact  that  they  had  larger  hopes,  a  more 
assiduous  communion  with  God,  and  special 
intimations  of  the  Spirit  concerning  the  things 
which  God  had  laid  up  for  them  that  loved 
Him.  It  would  be  called,  nowadays,  a  new 
sect,  and  as  such  meet  with  prompt  condemna- 
tion ;  but  the  sectarianism  involved  in  a  closer 
walk  with  God,  and  a  better  knowledge  of  His 
ways,  has  broad  shoulders,  and  can  bear  some 
reproaches,  without  being  bent  too  much  out 
of  the  perpendicular.  And  certainly  when  the 
apparently  sectarian  movement  becomes  set  to 
music  in  such  terms  as  the  Nunc  Dimittis 
offers,  and  discourses  of  a  "  salvation  prepared 
before  the  face  of  all  people,"  and  of  "  a  light 
that  was  to  be  a  revelation  of  the  Gentiles  "  as 
well  as  **the  glory  of  Thy  people  Israel,"  we 
can  only  say  that  the  apparently  sectarian  move- 
ment is  vastly  wider  than  the  Jewish  Church, 
from  which  a  larger  hope  has  differentiated  it. 


igo  UNION  WITH  GOD 

There  is  nothing  narrow  about  people  that  can 
sing  in  this  way. 

We  shall  understand  the  position  of  the 
First  Adventists  better,  if  we  remove  from  our 
minds  that  common  but  unverifiable  opinion 
that  all  the  Jews  in  our  Lord's  day  were 
indulging  Messianic  expectations.  It  is  so 
far  from  being  so  that  there  were  whole  com- 
munities from  which  we  get  no  evidence  ot 
such  beliefs.  Take,  for  example,  Alexandria, 
the  greatest  of  all  Jewish  colonies,  and  the 
nearest  to  Jerusalem.  When  our  Lord  came, 
the  leading  teacher  of  that  great  community, 
the  greatest  of  all  Jewish  teachers  outside  the 
Christian  movement,  was  Philo.  So  far  from 
Philo  indulging  Messianic  hopes  himself  or 
arousing  them  in  other  people,  we  find  him  to 
be  definitely  and  positively  an  anti-adventist, 
at  the  very  opposite  pole  to  good  Simeon  and 
Anna.  The  utmost  length  that  he  will  go  in 
the  indulging  of  national  hopes  is  that  there 
may  be  a  return  of  the  people  to  the  Holy 
Land  ;  but  even  with  regard  to  this  there  will 
be  no  leader  and  commander  of  the  people ; 
they  will  be  brought  back  by  a  Light,  and  even 


THE  HOL  Y  PA  TIENCE  1 9 1 

this  is  an  inward  Light,  visible  to  the  people 
themselves,  and  invisible  to  others — that  is,  a 
light  which  might  be  a  glory  of  God's  people 
Israel,  but  in  no  sense  was  an  apocalypse  of 
the  nations.  It  is  very  important  to  study 
these  cross-currents  and  opposing  centres  in 
the  Judaism  of  our  Lord's  time,  and  to  recon- 
struct, as  far  as  possible,  the  molecular  group- 
ings of  the  B.C.  believers.  If  we  could  determine 
the  characteristic  beliefs  of  the  great  synagogues 
of  those  days,  we  should  probably  see  reasons 
why  the  Church  made  more  rapid  progress  in 
some  centres  than  in  others — why  it  was,  for 
example,  so  rapid  in  Rome  and  so  slow  in 
Alexandria.  And,  at  all  events,  we  can  see 
that  the  Adventists  were  right,  and  Philo 
(blessed  man  though  he  was)  was  wrong,  and 
that  it  was  better  to  have  had  a  part  in  the 
most  simple  religious  exercises  of  the  waiting 
people  in  Jerusalem  than  to  have  imbibed  the 
deepest  wisdom  of  the  man  who  wrote  the 
tract  Who  is  the  Heir  of  Things  Divine  ? 
For  Christ  did  come,  even  though  Philo  ex- 
pressed so  decidedly  an  opinion  to  the  contrary ; 
and  the  Adventists  saw  Him  first ;   while,   as 


192  UNION  WITH  GOD 

far  as  we  know,  Philo  never  had  the  privilege 
of  seeing  the  Salvation  of  God. 

All  of  which  is  to  me,  at  all  events,  peculiarly 
instructive ;  for  it  has  a  very  practical  bearing 
when  we  turn  to  our  second  consideration, 
which  is  that  the  Second  Advent  is  the  subject 
of  the  Holy  Patience,  exactly  as  the  First  was. 
Waiting  and  its  correlative  Watching  are  the 
distinctive  marks  of  the  Church  of  the  last 
days,  in  so  far  as  the  Church  of  the  last  days 
is  alive.  In  a  certain  sense  it  has  always  been 
the  mark  of  the  living  Church  :  "  Ye  turned 
unto  God  from  idols  ...  to  wait  for  His  Son 
from  heaven";  "To  them  that  look  for  Him 
He  shall  appear,  without  sin,  unto  salvation  "  ; 
"  A  crown  of  righteousness  which  the  Lord, 
the  righteous  judge,  shall  give  unto  me  in  that 
day ;  and  not  to  me  only,  but  to  all  them  that 
love  His  appearing."  Is  there  no  parallel 
between  the  case  of  people  who  to-day  love 
His  appearing,  and  of  those  who  in  earlier 
times  were  described  as  "  waiting  for  the 
Comfort  of  Israel"?  And  if  such  a  parallel 
does  exist,  will  it  not  be  important  to  ask 
whether  our  attitude  on  the  question  of  the  last 


THE  HOL  Y  PA  TIENCE  1 93 

days  is  consonant  with  a  just  interpretation  of 
the  promises  of  Christ,  and  whether  we  may 
not  lose,  by  an  undue  spiritualising  of  Scripture, 
just  where  we  seem  to  find  ? — for  the  best 
mystical  illumination  is  no  substitute  for  a  lost 
promise  of  Jesus  Christ.  Blessed  are  those 
servants  whom  their  Lord,  when  He  cometh, 
shall  find  watching. 

The  third  point  to  be  noticed  is  that  the 
Holy  Patience  has  to  do  with  another  great 
dispensational  truth — the  descent  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  We  have  spoken  of  the  organised 
expectancy  for  the  Comfort  of  Israel  :  and  the 
Comfort  of  Israel  was  Christ  Incarnate — our 
first  Comforter,  as  the  Blessed  Spirit  is  the 
other  Comforter,  in  order  that  under  no  stage 
of  the  Christian  Church's  history  should  be- 
lievers be  orphans. 

But  it  is  just  as  true  of  the  Descent  of  the 
Spirit  as  of  the  Incarnation  that  it  was  looked 
for  by  a  nucleus  of  simple-minded  people,  to 
whom  the  promises  of  God  and  the  spiritual 
intimations  that  they  received  were  everything 
in  the  world.  Nevertheless,  it  is  true  that 
even  Pentecost  has  something  about  it  which 

13 


194  UNION  WITH  GOD 

looks  like  sectarianism.  When  they  called  the 
Church-roll  on  the  great  and  notable  day,  there 
were  many  names  missing  that  might  have 
been  expected,  beside  the  name  of  Judas. 
One  hundred  and  twenty  Spirit-baptised  persons 
is  far  short  even  of  the  five  hundred  brethren 
who  are  reported  to  have  seen  the  Risen  Christ 
upon  one  occasion  ;  and  how  vastly  short  of 
the  number  of  the  names  of  those  who  had 
experienced  His  healing  grace  or,  in  one  form 
or  another,  proved  His  saving  power  !  One 
might  almost  use  Christ's  own  words,  and 
apply  them  to  the  praising  people  in  the  upper 
room  :  "  Were  there  not  ten  cleansed  ?  and 
where  are  the  nine  ?  There  are  not  found  that 
return  and  give  God  the  glory,  except  this 
handful !  "  But  this  only  shows  that  the  Holy 
Patience,  in  which  these  souls  tarry  for  their 
enduement  of  Divine  Life  and  Power,  is,  as  it 
were,  an  election  within  the  election  ;  and  that 
here  also  many  are  called,  but  few  chosen. 

It  is  possible  that,  at  the  time  of  this  great 
manifestation  of  God  to  the  world,  there  may 
have  been  those  amongst  early  disciples  who 
had  either  ventured  to  disbelieve  the  promise 


THE  HOLY  PATIENCE  195 

of  the  Father,  or  had  falsely  consoled  them- 
selves by  a  belief  that  the  Church  was  already 
enjoying  all  that  was  meant  by  the  Promise ! 

Last  of  all,  when  we  turn  from  dispensational 
truth  to  personal  experience,  which  is  its  mirror 
and  reproduction,  we  find  ourselves  face  to  face 
with  the  promise  of  great  and  notable  days  for 
ourselves,  as  important  to  our  lives  as  the 
coming  of  Christ  to  the  world  or  the  day  of 
Pentecost  to  the  Church — with  blessings  defi- 
nite enough,  if  Scripture  be  not  misleading,  to 
awaken  all  desire  and  unite  us  all  experimentally 
in  the  Holy  Patience  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking.  "  I  will  dwell  in  them  and  walk  in 
them  "  ;  "  He  dwelleth  with  you  and  shall  be 
in  you";  "The  Lord,  whom  ye  seek,  shall 
suddenly  come  to  His  temple"  :  and  over  every 
promised  revelation  of  Christ  to  the  soul,  we 
take  up  the  language  which  is  natural  to  the 
last  days,  and  say,  "  Even  so,  come,  Lord 
Jesus." 


XII 

THE  DEATH-SONG 


XII 

THE  DEATH-SONG 

I  HAVE  a  dear  and  gifted  friend  who, 
when  she  writes  to  me,  seals  her  letters 
with  the  legend  of  the  dying  swan,  "  Moriens 
cano,"  "As  I  die  I  sing";  for,  as  you  know, 
the  last  day  of  the  wild  swan's  life  is  said  to  be 
set  to  music.  It  has  often  happened  that  the 
imagination  has  played  sweetly  false  with  natural 
history,  and  has  supported  both  dogma  and 
ethics  on  some  statement  which  cannot  be  found 
in  treatises  on  zoology.  The  early  Christians, 
for  example,  found  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrec- 
tion in  the  story  of  the  phoenix  ;  and  some  of 
them  believed  the  "  sole  Arabian  bird  "  to  have 
been  expressly  designed  by  God  for  the  preach- 
ing of  a  life  to  come.  And  something  similar 
to  this  has  happened  in  the  case  of  the  wild 
swan,  which  was  supposed  to  become  oracular 


200  UNION  WITH  GOD 

before  Its  death,  and  is  therefore  the  symbol  for 
the  most  exalted  hopes  which  man  is  privileged 
to  indulge,  as  he  looks  over  the  verge  of  his 
narrow  world  into  the  broad  world  which  God 
has  laid  up  for  them  that  love  Him. 

It  is  a  figure  which  often  meets  us  in  litera- 
ture ;  for  instance,  there  is  a  noble  passage  in 
the  Phcedo  of  Plato,  in  which  the  dying  Socrates 
is  made  to  compare  himself  with  the  prophetic 
birds  that  are  sacred  to  Apollo  :  "  For  they, 
when  they  perceive  that  they  must  die,  having 
sung  all  their  life  long,  do  then  sing  more  than 
ever,  rejoicing  in  the  thought  that  they  are 
about  to  go  away  to  the  god  whose  ministers 
they  are.  For  because  they  are  sacred  to 
Apollo  they  have  the  gift  of  prophecy,  and 
anticipate  the  good  things  of  another  world  ; 
wherefore  they  sing  and  rejoice  on  that  day 
more  than  ever  they  did  before."^ 

And  the  student  of  the  life  of  Tennyson  (and 
the  study  of  the  life  includes  the  memory  of  the 
death)  will  recall  how  favourite  a  figure  this 
was  to  him.     We  find  it  in  the  most  exquisite 

'  Plato's  Phcedo^  84  D. 


THE  DEATH-SONG  201 

of  his  early  poems,  The  Dying  Swan,  in  which 
he  describes  the  way  in  which 

"  The  wild  swan's  death-note  took  the  soul  of  that  waste 
place 
With  joy  mingled  with  sorrow." 

It  appears  again  as  the  leading  metaphor  in 
The  Passing  of  Arthur,  whose  exit  is  compared 
to  the  bird  that, 

"  fluting  a  wild  carol  ere  her  death. 
Ruffles  her  pure  cold  plume,  and  takes  the  flood 
With  swarthy  webs." 

And  last  of  all,  chiefest  of  all,  it  is  the  figure 
by  which  one  naturally  describes  the  best  and 
greatest  words  which  we  associate  with  his 
memory,  the  song  that  predicted  his  own 
passing,  as  he  crossed  the  bar,  and  knew  his 
Pilot  face  to  face.  The  wild  swan  will  not 
drop  out  of  literature,  even  though  she  may 
have,  in  the  sense  that  poets  praise  her,  dropped 
out  of  natural  history.  We  have  too  deep- 
rooted  a  belief  in  the  life  to  come  to  suppose 
that  we  are  obliged  to  enter  it  as  upon  an 
absolutely  foreign  country.  It  must  surely  be 
possible,  from  some  point  of  spiritual  vantage, 


202  UNION  WITH  GOD 

to  see  the  land  from  afar.  Nor  are  the  counsels 
of  those  upon  whom  the  light  of  the  City  is 
already  falling  likely  to  be  always  feeble  with 
the  weakness  of  failing  lips.  And  certainly  it 
is  not  an  ordinary  thing  for  a  person  who  has 
lived  in  Divine  communion  to  "die,  and  give 
no  sign  "  ;  for  a  holy  life  is  always  oracular  with 
truth  and  electric  with  love  ;  and  why  should 
it  cease  to  be  so  because  it  has  become  re- 
newedly  conscious  that  the  night  is  far  spent, 
and  the  day  is  at  hand  ? 

Let  us  consider  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  What 
a  death-song  was  that  which  He  sang  to  His 
disciples  in  the  last  hours  of  their  outward 
companionship !  We  recognise  how  the  note 
has  changed  in  Christ's  speech  when  we  read 
the  closing  chapters  of  St.  John's  Gospel,  say 
from  the  thirteenth  to  the  seventeenth,  and 
compare  them  either  with  the  earlier  discourses 
in  the  same  Gospel,  or  with  the  fragments  of 
His  teaching  in  the  other  Gospels.  How  far 
we  are  now  removed  from  the  discussion  of 
merely  local  issues,  such  as  Sabbath-day 
healings,  and  the  like  !  Instead  of  the  relative 
superiority  of  Jerusalem  or  Samaria  as  places 


THE  DEATH-SONG  203 

of  worship,  we  hear  of  a  single  flock,  composed 
of  those  who  believe,  and  of  others  who  will 
believe  through  their  word.  We  are  past  the 
point  where  it  is  discussed  whether  this  or  that 
Jewish  feast  is  to  be  attended  when  the  last 
great  Passover  has  been  reached,  concerning 
which  He  said,  "  With  desire  I  have  desired  to 
eat  this  Passover  with  you  before  I  suffer."  All 
doubtful  situations  have  disappeared  from  the 
life ;  and  with  the  end  in  full  view  He  fulfils 
the  Scriptures  written  concerning  Himself,  and 
notes,  as  the  last  steps  of  the  journey  are  taken, 
that  these  steps  are  fore-ordained,  and  that 
thus  it  must  be.  For  the  last  time  He  has  said, 
what  was  one  of  His  characteristic  words  in  the 
early  ministry,  that  His  hour  was  not  yet  come  ; 
for  He  now  knows  assuredly  that  the  time  is 
come  when  He  is  to  be  delivered  into  the  hands 
of  sinners,  and  when  He  is  to  return  to  the 
Father. 

Accordingly  when  we  read  these  chapters  we 
hear  in  them  the  "awful  jubilant  voice"  of  the 
wild  Swan  ;  and  some  of  the  notes  of  this  song, 
sung  in  sight  of  the  City,  will  set  us  also  singing, 
as  if  we  shared  the  vision. 


204  UNION  WITH  GOD 

Let  US  examine  some  of  the  points  at  which 
we  become  partakers  of  the  Lord's  hope,  and 
fulfillers  of  His  saying,  that  all  things  which  He 
had  learned  from  the  Father  He  had  made 
known  to  His  disciples. 

First  of  all,  think  of  the  marvellous  freedom 
from  heart-care  of  which  He  spoke.  "  Let  not 
your  heart  be  troubled,  neither  let  it  be  afraid. 
Believe  in  God  and  believe  in  Me."  And  as 
He  said  the  words  the  care  of  the  whole  world 
was  gathered  upon  His  shoulders.  He  was 
already  being  crushed  by  the  sin  and  the  sorrow 
of  the  world  ;  presently  He  will  be  forced  by 
the  sheer  weight  of  them  to  His  knees.  Nor 
will  He  be  able  to  rise  again  without  the  aid 
of  an  angelic  ministry  to  strengthen  Him.  Yet 
in  the  midst  of  this  burden,  what  boundless 
cheer !  With  the  burden  of  the  world  there 
was  involved  the  care  of  the  Church.  Over 
the  general  mass  of  believers  He  is  saying,  "  I 
pray  for  them,"  and  over  the  pressing  needs  of 
individuals,  of  whom  Peter  is  the  representative, 
He  is  saying,  "  I  have  prayed  for  thee."  It  is 
one  of  the  astonishing  characteristics  of  our 
Lord's    last    prayers    that    they    exhibit    such 


THE  DEATH- SONG  205 


freedom  of  choice  in  the  subject  concerning 
which  request  is  made.  We  find  by  experi- 
ment that,  even  when  we  have  attained  to 
a  measure  of  the  grace  of  intercession,  that 
immediate  and  pressing  personal  needs  have 
a  tendency  to  make  friends  forgotten  at  the 
Mercy-seat.  We  cannot  always  carry  a  heavier 
burden  of  petition  than  is  evoked  by  our  own 
circumstances  and  proper  to  our  own  day  of 
trial.  There  is  a  want  of  spiritual  elasticity 
about  the  inner  life  which  often  prevents  us, 
under  the  stress  of  personal  suffering,  from 
responding  to  the  needs  of  others.  Yet  in 
our  Lord's  last  days  and  hours  we  recognise 
a  wonderful  buoyancy,  which  is  not  limited  to 
the  single  statement,  "  I  have  overcome  the 
world  !  "  "■  Father,  I  will,"  is  strangely  alter- 
nated with  "Not  My  will,  but  Thine."  "Be 
of  good  cheer  "  falls  from  the  same  lips  that 
will  presently  be  saying  "  My  soul  is  exceeding 
sorrowful."  Granted  that  the  waves  of  unutter- 
able grief  are  breaking  in  succession  against  the 
beaten  promontory  of  His  perfect  faith  and 
changeless  love,  and  that  betrayal  and  denial 
are  followed  by  the  fluctus  dectcmana,  or  tenth 


2o6  UNION  WITH  GOD 

wave,  of  a  general  desertion,  we  must  also 
recognise  the  incoming  of  a  tide  of  exultant  joy 
(He  calls  it  *'  My  joy,"  as  though  it  were  some 
prize  He  had  found  in  the  waste  places  of  this 
world) ;  and  this  joy  is  prospective  beyond  the 
pain.  It  almost  seems  as  if  He  were  prepar- 
ing to  stand  outside  His  own  grave,  and  say, 
"  Jesus,  come  forth,"  as  He  had  done  at  the 
grave  of  Lazarus.  He  saw  an  unoccupied 
tomb  beyond  the  sealed  one,  and  an  occupied 
throne  in  the  place  of  the  one  that  He  had 
vacated.  Depend  upon  it  that  such  spiritual 
exultation,  in  which  the  spirit  claimed  its  right 
to  sing  its  own  triumph,  had  its  Jluctus  decumana 
as  truly  as  the  ocean  of  sorrow,  and  that  its 
flood-mark  was  higher.  Such  freedom  from 
care  and  such  spiritual  confidence  is  one  of  the 
characteristic  notes  of  the  true  swan-song. 

Secondly,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  our 
Swan  sang  of  the  life  to  come.  And  it  is  clear 
from  the  stray  words  of  the  song  that  have 
come  down  to  us,  that  Jesus  Christ  regarded 
the  next  world  with  perfect  naturalness.  Two 
notes  recur  in  this  part  of  the  music  :  one  is 
the  word  "  Home,"  and  the  other  is  the  word 


THE  DEATH-SONG  207 

"  A  little  while."  Both  of  these  words  are 
within  the  compass  of  our  own  voices,  and  the 
scale  of  our  own  instruments.  Our  Lord  said 
nothing  about  the  life  to  come  in  these  chapters 
that  would  provoke  ideas  of  a  spectacular 
character.  No  trumpets  sound,  no  rapturous 
welcome  is  heard.  For  a  moment  we  almost 
forget  that  the  song  is  the  jubilation  of  a 
conqueror.  "  The  glory  which  I  had  with 
Thee"  turns  into  the  lowly  language  of  "  My 
Father's  house "  ;  and  He  Himself,  as  He 
turns  and  looks  back  upon  His  brethren  whom 
He  is  leaving,  says  to  them,  "  I  shall  be  your 
courier  in  another  world ;  I  will  prepare  a 
place  for  you  ;  and  when  you  come  I  will  open 
the  door  to  receive  you,  as  if  I  were  the 
servant,  and  you  the  master,  and  as  if  I  were 
still  among  you  as  the  one  that  ministers."  It 
is  certain  there  is  more  true  music  in  these 
simple  statements  than  in  the  language  of  the 
highest  coloured  apocalypse.  We  can  never 
be  thankful  enough  to  the  Lord  for  having 
made  the  thought  of  the  next  life  so  contiguous 
to  the  fact  of  the  life  that  now  is,  and  for 
having  revealed  it  so  clearly  as  the  prolongation 


2o8  UNION  WITH  GOD 

of  the  righteousness,  peace,  and  joy  in  believing 
which  we  enjoy  here  and  now.  With  this 
gratitude  is  also  mingled  the  thankfulness  for 
the  words  "  Yet  a  little  while."  Without  Christ 
these  words  are  a  passing  bell ;  with  Christ 
they  are  a  chiming  bell.  He  used  them  over 
Himself  that  we  might  learn  to  use  them 
over  ourselves.  "  A  little  while  and  ye  shall 
not  see  Me,  and  again  a  little  while  and  ye 
shall  see  Me."  Any  separation  from  Him 
would  have  seemed  like  an  age  to  those  to 
whom  His  presence,  even  in  the  outward, 
meant  so  much  ;  but  for  the  elect's  sake  the 
days  were  shortened  until  theyappeared  as  "a 
little  while."  And  all  separations  are  included 
in  the  same  formula.  He  gave  us  in  His 
own  life  an  object-lesson  in  reunion.  This  we 
could  not  have  learned  from  the  grass  that 
to-day  is,  and  to-morrow  is  cast  into  the  oven  ; 
nor  from  the  daffodils  that  "  haste  away  so 
soon,"  for  they  only  proclaim  "A  little  while 
and  ye  shall  not  see  me."  But  we  can  learn  it 
from  the  perfect  flower  of  the  triumphant  life 
of  the  Christ  that  prepares  to  die,  and  knows 
that  death  will  have  only  a  moment's  dominion 


THE  DEATH-SONG  209 

over  Him.  Is  not  this  thought  of  the  reunion 
of  the  Hfe  to  come  a  part  of  the  true  swan- 
music  ? 

But,  in  the  next  place,  we  may  remember 
that  a  part  of  this  last  song  was  an  action. 
You  will  find  it  in  John  xiii.,  where  He  washes 
the  disciples'  feet.  It  could  not  be  done  in 
words  only,  because  it  was  not  possible  that 
words  could  leave  an  example  ;  and  without 
an  example  the  doctrine  inculcated  would  not 
have  been  believed.  Compared  to  mere  words, 
even  good  and  holy  words,  a  loving  action  is 
an  orchestra  to  a  shepherd's  pipe.  So  He  laid 
aside  His  garments  (as  if  it  were  a  mystery 
play  of  the  Incarnation),  and  took  on  Him  the 
form  and  the  fashion  of  a  servant  (as  He  had 
done  in  the  great  humiliation),  and  went  out 
of  the  world  having  left  nothing  menial  in  it, 
because  He  so  successfully  had  taken  the 
lowest  place  from  first  to  last,  and  had  in 
Himself  made  the  humblest  actions  holy.  Few 
things  had  so  emphasised  the  gulf  between 
Christ  and  His  disciples  as  this  loving  action 
had  done.  When  it  was  over  they  looked  on 
His  feet,  and  did  not  venture  to  wash  them  in 

14 


210  UNION  WIIH  GOD 

return.  Not  even  the  beloved  John  proposed 
to  take  up  the  towel  which  Jesus  dropped. 
Nor  did  He  urge  such  reciprocity  upon  them 
towards  Himself,  but  said,  "  Do  to  one  another 
the  lowly  thing  which  I  have  done  to  you." 
This  was  swan-music  indeed — sphere-music 
apart  from  and  beyond  the  incidental  words 
which  the  situation  provoked.  It  would  have 
been  a  part  of  the  great  harmony  if  it  had 
been  done  in  silence. 

Last  of  all,  this  death-song  was  a  song  of 
the  victory  of  love  over  all  ills.  It  is  true 
that  in  this  song  faith,  hope,  and  love  all 
conspire  to  bear  a  part ;  but  here  also  the 
rule  is  not  broken  that  the  greatest  of  these  is 
love.  The  closing  chapters  of  John  are  full 
of  statements  of  the  love  of  God  to  Christ, 
and  the  love  of  God  in  Christ ;  of  love  that  is 
before  the  foundation  of  the  world,  and  of  love 
that  will  be  unshaken  when  the  foundations 
and  pillars  of  the  earth  do  tremble  ;  of  love 
that  was  in  the  beginning,  continues  with  its 
own  in  the  world,  and  is  with  them  even  to 
the  end ;  of  love  that  the  Father  had  for  the 
Son,   and  of  the    Son    for   the    Father.     And 


THE  DEATH-SONG 


when  we  have  sounded  a  little  in  this  mystery, 
we  are  told  that  the  love  of  God  to  the  believer 
is  the  same  as  the  love  wherewith  He  loved 
the  Son ;  for,  says  Christ,  "  Thou  hast  loved 
them  as  Thou  hast  loved  Me."  We  see  it  in 
action,  as  He  pours  water,  and  in  passion,  as 
He  sheds  His  life-blood.  And  we  understand 
from  Him  that  this  single  principle  is  an 
equivalent  of  every  rule  of  good  conduct,  and 
fulfils  all  righteousness  ;  that  everything  which 
God  can  be  in  man,  or  which  He  can  do 
through  man,  shapes  itself  into  this  single  and 
perfect  syllable,  the  last  great  oracular  word, 
the  closing  note  of  the  great  music  of  the 
Dying  Swan. 


Printed  by  Hasell,  IVatson,  <S'  Viney,  Ld.,  London  and  Aylesbury. 


--•'V  /i**    -It.        .      «'/^ 

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